Family-to-Family

Share Your Bounty

FamtoFamily

A group of employee “angels” at Dannon in White Plains, N.Y. put together a whopping 270 “dinners in a bag” for impoverished local families over the holiday season. Using Family-to-Family’s “Let’s Do Dinner!” project as a template, Dannon chefs provided recipes for healthy dinners to Dannon employees, who then shopped for the recipe ingredients and assembled the bags during several half-hour “meal packing competitions.”

A group of employee “angels” at Dannon in White Plains, N.Y. put together a whopping 270 “dinners in a bag” for impoverished local families over the holiday season. Using Family-to-Family’s “Let’s Do Dinner!” project as a template, Dannon chefs provided recipes for healthy dinners to Dannon employees, who then shopped for the recipe ingredients and assembled the ingredients into bags during several half-hour “meal packing competitions.”  Each bag contained all ingredients needed for a full meal for a family of five, plus a copy of the printed recipe.  The bags were delivered to six Westchester County, N.Y. nonprofits that work with families in need (all affiliated with the social services agency Westhab, Inc.), enabling local families to cook a healthy dinner meal from a new recipe!

In an ongoing effort to help local families in need, employees from Stew Leonards grocery store in Yonkers, New York took part in another Family-to-Family project over the holidays (in the past they’ve participated in both our summer backpack and children’s book drives).  This time store team members put together baskets of holiday groceries for families in need through F-to-F’s Holiday Dinner Baskets project.  The baskets were delivered to the nearby Hastings on Hudson, N.Y. community food pantry, where they were given out to some of the 30 families the pantry serves each month.

 

This picture speaks a thousand words! Thanks to a super industrious high-school student from Lyndhurst, Ohio participating in F-to-F’s Stuffed Shirt Project, two nonprofit agencies serving impoverished and homeless children were happily inundated over the holidays with personal care items, warm clothing and more.

As part of his school community service requirement, teenager Richard M. handed out more than 150 flyers publicizing his collection project, and then picked up, organized and delivered over 500 (!) collected items.

His trove of donations included soaps, shampoo, shaving cream, razors, toothbrushes, toothpaste, tissues, deodorant, warm jackets, snowsuits, blankets, wool socks, boots, towels, toys and much more.

 

When we first had the idea for our Birthday Giving Project back in 2006, we never dreamed it would catch on the way it has! Since then, more than 9,000 children in need from 39 states across the U.S. have received one of our birthday boxes… made by hand by thousands of children and adults at birthday giving parties, office give-back days, bar and bat mitzvahs, scouting events and more. But many more are needed! Please email us to learn how you can make a “birthday in a box” for a child living in poverty.

Looking for a meaningful way to get your teenager involved with “giving back?” Have them start an F-to-F club and bring our empathy based projects into their high school. Four seniors at the Hastings on Hudson, NY High School are launching the first F-to-F school club this fall, starting with a project to collect gently used teen clothing that will be sold at a “pop-up” shop to support Family-to-Family. Future projects include work at the local food pantry. To learn more about ways your teen call get involved email us at kids@family-to-family.org.

Kids at the YMCA in Newark, New Jersey took part in a “day of giving,” at the end of the summer thanks to the efforts of one fourth grade girl from Rockaway Township (also N.J.)  With the help of her teacher at Stony Brook Elementary School, the fourth grader organized a book drive that collected a whopping six hundred gently used children‘s books for Family-to-Family’s GivingWorks Empathy Project. The books, along with 125 backpacks donated by the same student, were delivered to the Newark YMCA, where preteen and teenage kids living in poverty participated in a GivingWorks event – choosing books to read to.. and then give to… younger children in need. We call this double giving!