Senior hunger is something we don't often think about. During my year assignment with the Georgia Institute on Aging and Senior Citizen Services of Metropolitan Atlanta as a Community Volunteer Coordinator I had the opportunity to challenge senior hunger head on!
A partnership with Communities In Schools of Atlanta and Dunbar Elementary school yielded amazing results. Dunbar Elementary students love their seniors, and when I asked them to host a food drive they were up to the challenge! The collection was held over a period of 1 month starting before the Christmas holiday break and ending shortly after the Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday.Within that time they collected nearly 1,000 items between several classrooms, grades K-5.
Collection boxes featuring "we love our seniors" The items they collected were counted and sorted into the Mobile Community Pantry sponsored by the Fulton County Senior Collaborative (FCSC). FCSC is made up of representatives from Visiting Nurse Health System, Project Open Hand Atlanta and Senior Citizen Services of Metropolitan Atlanta. The three organizations work collaboratively to provide senior clients in the metro area with supplemental food assistance. Unlike a traditional pantry, the collaborative realizes the challenges that home bound or low-income seniors face and have worked diligently to recruit volunteers to deliver the food items directly to each clients door. Project Open Hand Atlanta has provided a dietitian to evaluate the food items and provide guidelines to ensure that each pantry bag is full of food items appropriate for each senior clients specific needs.
According to studies conducted by Meals On Wheels Association of America (Research Findings), Georgia ranks 6th highest in ranking of states by rate of limited or uncertain availability of food among seniors. Help FCSC collect food items for the Mobile Community Pantry. Take your non-pershible food items for donation to bins located at:
Senior Citizen Services
1705 Commerce Drive NW
Atlanta, GA 30318404-351-3889
Originally posted by Tamara Mack- Food Activist at 6:20 PM , January 18, 2011 at
http://right2eat.blogspot.com/2010/01/dunbar-elementary-school-food-drive-we.html
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