On Saturday, May 9, the day of the National Association of Letter Carriers Food Drive, postal trucks began returning to the Wilton Post Office laden with grocery bags of food donated that day by Wilton residents. The trucks were met by student volunteers from the Wilton High School Class of 2018 who offloaded the donations and then loaded them onto the Person-to-Person truck for transport to the South Norwalk Community Center, where another contingent of students from the Class of 2018 was on hand to receive the food donations.
On that one day, people in Wilton donated 17,640 pounds of food to benefit the P2P Food Pantry in Norwalk. Combined with same-day donations from Norwalk residents, P2P was able to collect a total of more than 54,000 pounds of donated food valued at more than $108,000.
According to Norwalk site manager Callie Jayne, who managed the collection effort, the Food Pantry at P2P Norwalk now has sufficient stock to provide food for nearly three months. “This is important because the summer months bring a higher demand for food as many clients are faced with providing three meals a day to their children who, during the school year, receive free or reduced meals,” she says.
While Fairfield County is an affluent area, many residents do live in poverty (9.6 percent) and struggle with food insecurity (11.7 percent overall; 16.4 percent of children). The food donations from the Wilton community, valued at more than $35,000, will provide more than 2,100 people with enough food to prepare three meals a day for seven days.
Organizers say the generosity absolutely does make a difference in the lives of others. As one Food Pantry client stated during a recent study P2P conducted, “I don’t know if there would be another option. I would probably be hungry.”
According to P2P, the work went smoothly and quickly in large part due to the can-do spirit of the WHS student volunteers.
“In all, nearly 90 students participated in the NALC Food Drive,” Jayne says. “In Norwalk, they got into a groove that allowed them to offload the arriving postal trucks – and the P2P truck that made several trips from Wilton – in record time. Other students stood ready inside the community center; some working to stack the grocery bags for Monday’s sort while others began unpacking bags, checking expiration dates and sorting the food into crates.”
To accommodate the huge amount of donations being received in Wilton on that Saturday – the final tally was over 1,700 bags – one of the school busses that had brought the students to Norwalk was dispatched to the Wilton Post Office. Once there, the students loaded the seats with grocery bags and the bus returned to Norwalk with its cargo.
Person-to-Person was grateful to everyone who donated food, as well as the volunteers. “Because people came together in these two communities,” Jayne says, “many individuals and families in Norwalk, Weston, Westport and Wilton will know where their next meal is coming from.”