York Town News
YCSA holiday food drive offers a chance to help neighbors in need
By Virginia L. Woodwell
Residents of Sentry Hill at York Harbor collected a shopping cart's worth of nonperishable groceries to start this year's York Community Service Association holiday food drive. Pictured are residents presenting the items to YCSA Director Lorna Ryan.
Photo by Virginia Woodwell
YORK - York Community Service Association's annual holiday food drive got under way officially this week as YCSA Director Lorna Ryan accepted a shopping-cart load of canned goods and other nonperishable items collected by residents at Sentry Hill.
The Sentry Hill donations will be combined with other, similar ones collected around town between now and Nov. 17 to fill the more than 300 baskets that YCSA will distribute to York's needy in the upcoming holidays, 150 at Thanksgiving and more than that number at Christmas.
"We have a lot of hungry people in this town, I think more than people realize," Ryan said in thanking the Sentry Hill donors on Friday. "We want to make holiday feasts for these people."
During the rest of the year, Ryan explained, the York Food Pantry works to meet the needs of the hungry. YCSA, whose broader mission is to provide service to the needy in a variety of emergency situations and whose 1959 founding actually predates the pantry, steps in to do this particular job at this time each year.
And the need, she added, is growing. Cost-of-living hikes have steadily increased the number of those in need over the last decade, she reported, while, last year, donations were down in the face of competing charity demands created by the tsunami disaster and Hurricane Katrina.
Ryan would like to make this a contrasting banner year. Collection boxes have now been placed around town at: Hannaford, York's schools, all local banks except Bank of America, Town Hall, the York Public Library, the York Senior Center, the YCSA Thrift Shop, Norma's Restaurant and Amidon Family Dentistry.
Welcome in the boxes are canned fruit and vegetables and any nonperishable food items - rice, pickles, olives, cranberry sauce, pie fillings, stuffing mixes, pasta and spaghetti sauces, gravy and more - as well as paper goods like towels and napkins.
For the Thanksgiving phase of this effort, the next task is getting all the donated material to St. Christopher's Church, where it has traditionally been assembled and dispersed. All that takes many volunteers, and more than two days' work. Traditionally in charge of collecting the 1,000 empty boxes needed have been Ray Fernald and Bud Donnell. Donnell stores them in his garage, and, on the Sunday before Thanksgiving, half are brought to the church. There, some 30 volunteers begin by numbering the boxes, coding them to match the various sizes of the families to be served. Ryan already knows most of the families and their needs, and her list is matched by one from the Food Pantry. The volunteers -they're from the town's churches, service clubs, schools and scouting organizations - then sort all the foods.
On Monday of Thanksgiving week, about 15 volunteers work from 8 a.m. to noon packing the canned goods into the boxes and sorting the more perishable foods like potatoes, onions, grapes and apples, purchased by YCSA, which will be added.
On Tuesday, the turkeys go in. Thanksgiving's turkeys are all donated by RE/MAX Realty One. To the canned goods already in place will be added the other perishables, items like pies and bread and butter.
That afternoon, the filled boxes - they're called "baskets" but are actually boxes - going to seniors and to shut-ins will be delivered; the rest will be picked up at the church by the recipients.
Come Christmas, the whole process will be repeated.
"It's a lot of work," Ryan acknowledges, but, she stressed, "it's also a lot of fun," in part because of all the camaraderie involved but chiefly because, as she puts it, "It's uplifting, just knowing that you're helping somebody. … Our holiday drive provides food and joy to the needy in the town of York."
Taking a broader view of YCSA's ongoing role, and looking ahead to Christmas, she noted that YCSA can always use gift certificates for gas, phones, home heating oil and for purchases at stores like Hannaford, Kmart, and Wal-Mart.
For information about receiving a food basket, to contribute a gift certificate or to volunteer at any stage in the effort, call Lorna Ryan at 363-5504.
