Volunteer Newsletter – March 2025
I’m treating you all to the monthly volunteer newsletter before I depart for vacation tomorrow.
When I return at the end of next week, I’ll send the first email blast asking for the hundreds of hands needed for our annual Post Office Food Drive event. This year’s date is Saturday, May 10th, from 10 am – 6 pm, with the prior week dedicated to stuffing bags with flyers and distributing the bags throughout Northampton and Florence to as many residences as possible. Perhaps you know people who have wanted to help at NSC but haven’t had regular, dedicated time to volunteer. We often have first-time folks help with the event. Send them my way! As in the past, we depended on many volunteers to make the POFD a grand success!
It’s always a fun day with lots of action, food, and music. More details to follow.
This past week, we accepted our 265th active volunteer! All the dedicated volunteers allow us to continue the work we do as we support our neighbors in need. The more the merrier!
Volunteer Spotlight: Brenna Curley – weekly volunteer who staffs the outside bonus food risers in all kinds of weather!
– I’m currently a senior at Smith College studying Biology. I hope to work at a hospital in Boston after graduation as a patient experience representative before going off to grad school for genetic counseling in a few years! I have been volunteering at NSC since September. I’ve loved the community that Northampton Survival Center has given me both with the other workers and volunteers and the people who we serve. A fun fact about me is that I have four cats and I’m always happy to talk about them!
Our volunteer Jennifer Ablard has an exhibition tomorrow!
etsy.com/shop/JenniferAblardPhoto
https://jenniferablardphotography.com/
https://www.instagram.com/jennifer.ablard.photography
We have many volunteers who also volunteer at other organizations. One such volunteer has let me know that Cooley Dickenson Hospital currently has some volunteer openings. Would you like to share other places you currently volunteer?
Volunteer Anniversaries- Liz Leibowitz celebrates 16 years with the Survival Center this month.
The prepared meal offerings from two local restaurants this past month have been extremely successful and it’s been a joy to hear clients say what a treat it is not to have to prepare dinner on a busy day!
We are fortunate to have the opportunity to extend these delicious meals through the middle of April.
Speaking of April, we are ready for extended hours for our curbside and drive-through service on Wednesdays (12-6pm) starting April 2nd. We still have some weekly opportunities available if anyone is interested in picking up a shift. This additional late night will be welcomed by our clients who work past 3 pm and can’t access the pantry till later in the day.
Staff spotlight – Diane Drohan, Volunteer Manager NSC and Pantry Manager for our Hilltown Pantry.
Some of this will be old news for those volunteers who have been with NSC for a while. I grew up in Long Island, and some say I still maintain a bit of an accent even after 35-plus years, but of course I don’t hear it. After 6 years at my job in NYC, where I worked for a hotel company booking corporate retreats in Puerto Rico, I threw away the briefcase and suits and departed for Vermont. I worked in sales for a ski resort and raised my family over the next 25 years. Once my three sons were on their own, my daughter and I moved to the Northampton area. I volunteered at the Survival Center for 15 months and then joined the staff 12 years ago. I am a huge fan of local and sometimes not-so-local live music and you may run into me at any number of music venues or festivals in the valley.
One of the highlights of any given day is when I witness interactions between volunteers who are working alongside each other for the first time or those who work together weekly. I was very touched by this recent email and wanted to share it.
‘Thank you for pairing me with Dave yesterday, I enjoyed working with him and it was heartwarming to see his interactions with the clients who came to the door. He is a compassionate and caring man. It was also fun to be on the production line filling the bags at the beginning. The positive mood there was a good antidote to the current feelings I have about our country. After our deliveries were over I had a profound sense of gratitude for what I have, it can be so easy to overlook that.’
Volunteer tips – extra touch of kindness and understanding
Words are Powerful
One goal, among many, is to provide our clients with as consistent an experience as possible and to assure them that while we don’t have everything all the time, we always have food to send home with them and will try our best to meet their needs.
If there is a language barrier other than Spanish (the menu is printed in English and Spanish) and you’ve tried your best to communicate with the client, please feel free to check with a staff person who can help translate if needed. We do have some menus in other languages and can use Google Translate if necessary. I always try to imagine how challenging it is for us; it must be so much more difficult for the client to navigate the process of getting food.
We have limited items to offer in specific categories:
No apologies necessary. We are not a grocery store and, therefore, we just don’t always have choices in every category, and that’s truly ok. You can feel good about sending people home with food.
A client asks for something, and you happen to know that we have just run out of it:
“No, we don’t have peaches. How about mixed fruit?” – is better than pointing out that we ran out – that only enforces the idea that folks should line up early to be among the first to be served.
A client is choosing more than their allotment: “You have ‘X’ amount of points allotted for your household size – are there any priority items you’d like today? And we have bonus items that don’t use any points.” Remind clients that they can come back every week for dairy, frozen meat, produce, bread/pastries, toiletries and bonus items which don’t use any points!
Please feel free to share interactions where something you’ve said may have made the client feel welcomed, heard and respected or turned around a challenging situation.
I would like to give a shout out to one of our monthly donors, Our Lady of the Hills in Williamsburg, whose parishioners donate hundreds of pounds of food to the Hilltown Pantry.
One Sunday a month they do a themed donation drive such as Cereal Sunday, Soups and Condiments, Coffee and Tea, Paper Products and Personal Care items. We are grateful for the coordinated effort between what specific items our clients can use and what are donors provide. Always a win-win!
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Some information such as closing dates for holidays and our winter weather policy may be duplicated information which you can also find on the Better Impact homepage.
We will be closed on Monday, April 21st for Patriots Day.
Better Impact is the volunteer database where the schedule is posted and where volunteers can sign up or remove themselves from a shift. Please familiarize yourself with the site if you haven’t done so already.
Better Impact link
https://app.betterimpact.com/Login/LoginNoSearch?agencyGuid=65faad77-baa1-465f-99d7-fe0303e55ac6
Volunteer Handbook:
https://www.northamptonsurvival.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/NSC-Volunteer-Handbook-January-2025.pdf
To date in the month of March we have already given away over 350 of the very popular Creamy Red Lentil Soup Pantry Fresh kits. And there’s still a week to go!
Pantry Fresh recipe link
https://www.northamptonsurvival.org/pantryfresh/
Client newsletter link
https://www.northamptonsurvival.org/pantry-digest/