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chapelhill.porchcommunities.org |
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Hello!
Welcome to another edition of PORCH Chapel Hill-Carrboro’s quarterly newsletter, helping you stay up to date on everything happening within our organization.
Some of the most recent headlines:
- In the first half of 2022, you, the residents of Chapel Hill and Carrboro, donated $91,500 worth of non-perishable food items to PORCH through monthly neighborhood collections and special food drives. Tremendous work! Thank you! We also provided $160,000 worth of grocery gift cards to Food for Families participants; more than $140,000 worth of fresh food, including more than 120,000 pounds of fresh fruits and vegetables, 5,700 cartons of one-dozen eggs, 2,500 chickens, and 3,000 gallons of milk; and $10,200 worth of snacks for all Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools and two after-school programs.
All of our 2022 PORCH dates can be found on our website. Can you pitch in during the next monthly collection?
- This month, in partnership with the Orange County Health Department, we distributed these flyers (in English and Spanish) to over 500 families in our fresh Food for Families program. Vaccinations, testing, masking, and social distancing are so important right now as we see a rise in the number of COVID-19 infections in our community. Please share this information with your networks!
- Did you know that we pack special halal bags for some of our Food for Families participants? Halal food is permissible under Islamic law. One of our goals is to provide culturally-appropriate food to ensure that it is consumed and enjoyed by our program participants. Along these lines, we also communicate with our program participants in their preferred language, allowing us to interact effectively and respectfully with everyone we serve.
- Summer fun and PORCH fundraising go hand in hand! We are lucky that many of you host lemonade stands, bake sales, etc. to benefit our organization.
If you have an upcoming cookout, block party, or pool gathering, invite guests to bring a couple of non-perishable items with them. Then simply get in touch with us to donate them. One-time food drives are a great summer activity for kids! Organizing your civic group, place of worship, school, or workplace can be easy. Simply collect the non-perishable food items on our list and then email our program manager, Erica Brierley, to make arrangements to drop off your items.
- You are probably aware of the recent report that indicated that prices for basic necessities like groceries rose more than expected in June. We are adding families to our fresh Food for Families program every month. Summer is extra challenging, as children are without access to meals at school. Make a tax-deductible donation to PORCH Chapel Hill-Carrboro to increase our impact! You can also become a monthly sustainer when you give online and click on "recurring donation." Whether you contribute $5 or $50 a month, we appreciate your dedication to this mission!
- Habitat for Humanity of Orange County recently hosted a ribbon cutting for two new duplexes at Broad and Cobb streets in Carrboro. Each of the families contributed many hours of sweat equity in the building of their homes – as well as the homes of their new neighbors – forming a strong sense of community in their new Northside neighborhood. In PORCH’s new partnership with Habitat, we donate grocery gift cards each time there is a ribbon-cutting ceremony for a family moving into a new home in Chapel Hill or Carrboro, allowing them to stock their kitchens with foods they prefer.
Read on for more exciting updates. And check our blog regularly to learn the latest developments. Thank you, as always, for being an integral part of the PORCH community!
Best,
The PORCH Chapel Hill-Carrboro Team
P.S. Our thanks to volunteer photographer Tom Simon for capturing many of the images in this newsletter!
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'Hungry Kids Can't Learn Effectively'
“Having raised three grown sons, I know how hungry growing kids get and how much food it takes to keep them fed and on the go,” says Gary Elefante of Elefante Financial Services, a Food for Schools sponsor since 2016. “I support PORCH because I love helping kids, and PORCH helps families and kids in a most fundamental way by providing the nourishing food we all need to stay healthy, active, and productive. ...Hungry kids can’t learn effectively, and education is vital to giving kids a shot at success – something that all kids deserve.”
Through Food for Schools, we provide each school that's part of Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools with $1,000 worth of snacks in a school year – cheese crackers, granola bars, applesauce, trail mix, fruit bars, and more. Interested in learning more about sponsorship opportunities before the 2022-23 school year begins? Click here and scroll to the Sponsorship section.
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Double Time
Chloe Buchholtz and Johnathan Baddour, both rising seniors at Carrboro High School, completed a 10-mile walk through their nonprofit Acts of Kindness – Chapel Hill to raise $6,000 from sponsors, matching funds from a recent grant from RTI International. (That grant was written by RTI employee Chris Buchholtz.)
Chloe also serves as one of our Neighborhood Coordinators. We are so grateful for Chloe and Johnathan’s fundraising efforts on our behalf, doubling the impact of the RTI grant. These funds will help us provide more fresh food and grocery gift cards to the families in our fresh Food for Families program!
Chloe and Johnathan are pictured with our own Debbie Horwitz and Laura Malinchock.
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Family Ties
Mother and daughter Katie and Abby Weber helped with our food distribution and jumped in at a moment’s notice to assist with three deliveries toward the end of the day! Thank you! Abby has served on the leadership team of Chapel Hill High’s PORCH club and is off to college this fall.
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Fighting Food Insecurity with
Fresh, Healthy Foods
We recently received this note from a Food for Families participant: “[PORCH] means that I can offer [my child] healthy food more often as our food stamps often run out. She looks forward to the healthy treats every month."
Our vision is that each person in our Chapel Hill-Carrboro community will have access to sufficient nutritious food to meet their dietary needs for an active, productive, and healthy lifestyle.
We have increased the balance on each of the monthly grocery store gift cards that we send to our fresh Food for Families program participants to $60, knowing that the money simply doesn’t go as far as it did even weeks ago, and we are working to distribute more seasonal fresh produce, including local berries, peaches, and corn.
Thank you to our volunteers, donors, and partners who make this work possible! Together, we truly make a difference in our community.
Can you make a gift today? A $5 gift provides milk and eggs for one family; $25 provides chicken, milk, and eggs for two families; $50 provides a 10-day supply of fresh food to one family; $300 sponsors a family for six months; and $600 sponsors a family for a year.
Go to our donate page to make your gift. Click on “recurring donation” if you wish to become a PORCH monthly sustainer. You can also mail a check payable to PORCH Chapel Hill-Carrboro to P.O. Box 16363, Chapel Hill, NC 27516-6363.
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PO Box 16363
Chapel Hill, NC 27516
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