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| Central Hudson employees load a van for food basket deliveries. |
Two weeks before Thanksgiving, the telephones at Dutchess Outreach were ringing off the hook. Kathleen O’Rourke Murphy, the assistant executive director of the City of Poughkeepsie-based nonprofit, says she personally received and returned 36 phone calls in one day.
That’s nothing compared to the record set in Mid-November, when The Lunch Box, Dutchess Outreach’s soup kitchen, served its 69,254th meal. O’Rourke Murphy says that the meal marked the most served in a single calendar year since the soup kitchen’s inception 28 years ago – and 2010 isn’t over yet.
“I can easily say that our requests for assistance double during the holiday season,” O’Rourke Murphy said. “That’s why drives, like the one for Central Hudson’s food baskets, make such a difference.”
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Dutchess Outreach
Are you in need? Do you know someone who is? Clients can go to the food pantry at Dutchess Outreach, located on the second floor of the Family Partnership Center at 29 North Hamilton St. in Poughkeepsie, once every 30 days. Identification is required.
Interested in volunteering? Contact Dutchess Outreach’s Volunteer Coordinator Carol Beck, who is available Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday, from 9:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.
Dutchess Outreach can be reached at (845) 454-3792.
Food Bank of the
Hudson Valley
The Food Bank of the Hudson Valley supports more than 360 agencies like Dutchess Outreach in six counties. Last year the Food Bank distributed more than 9 million pounds of food to their member agencies. Every $1 you donate to the Food Bank buys $10 to $12 worth of food.
To learn more about how the Food Bank benefits your community, or to make a donation, visit: http://www.foodbankofhudsonvalley.org/
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For 30 years Central Hudson has been collecting and distributing food to neighbors in need each November. Today, Central Hudson partners with Dutchess Outreach to identify five local families who not only receive enough food for an entire Thanksgiving dinner, but enough to stock their pantries for weeks following the holiday.
Food drive, a history
Director of Information Systems Development Nicole Tancredi has been organizing Central Hudson’s Thanksgiving food drive for almost a decade. She took over for Rose Morrissey, a Senior Systems Analyst who retired from the company in 2000, and Morrissey took on the responsibility from Norma DeFelice, upon her retirement in 1993.
DeFelice says that she and her husband used to take food to the Dutchess County Department of Social Services each Thanksgiving and one day she decided to send a memo to her coworkers, asking for contributions. She says it was around 1980 and she had just been transferred from Customer Services to Programming.
“I was in a cubicle around all of the other programmers so I sent them a memo. In it I said, ‘We have so much and some people have nothing.’ The response was overwhelming,” she said. “We got enough food together for two or three families – just from the Programming area. I had no idea it was going to become a tradition.”
Now, 30 years later, Central Hudson employees continue to donate food, money and time each holiday season to feed some of the area’s neediest residents.
“Today, what we say is we’ll provide a Thanksgiving meal for five families, but because of the generous nature of Central Hudson employees, we actually give the families enough food to stock their shelves for several weeks – sometimes months,” Tancredi said.
When the drive first began, DeFelice would get the names of three Dutchess County families from Social Services, but Social Services eventually turned the drive
over to Dutchess Outreach. Today the organization gives Tancredi the names and addresses of five families.
“We only give out names of clients that we’ve worked with and really know, and we try to make the best matches possible because we understand the effort Central Hudson puts into the food baskets,” said O’Rourke Murphy. “To be able to have a traditional holiday meal means so much to them.”
“The recipients are always appreciative. There are usually a few tears and a few hugs, too,” Tancredi added.
Central Hudson’s annual Thanksgiving food drive isn’t just collecting and distributing food – it’s weeks of collecting, hours of shopping, sorting, packing, and then delivering. Last year more than a dozen employees volunteered their time collecting donations and sorting items the week before the holiday.
“Each and every department does a great job every year. The food drive is a company-wide undertaking and a team effort,” said Tancredi.
Two days before the holiday employees load up vans and begin delivering the food – a task that Tancredi says takes at least two trips.
Trips that are worth making, says O’Rourke Murphy.
“Unfortunately, if someone is on food stamps and they’re working, they won’t be able to collect enough ‘points’ to get a free turkey at a grocery store, so the opportunity for people to receive a turkey for a family of four, or six, or 10 is limited. Central Hudson’s generosity helps those folks out,” she said.
“Every year we get calls back from the clients who have received Central Hudson’s food baskets and they are in tears because they are so overwhelmed by the company’s generosity,” O’Rourke Murphy added.
Continuing to give
For Morrissey, who coordinated the food drive from 1993 to 2000, community service is second nature. Though she has moved from her home in LaGrange to Massachusetts, where she is closer to her children and grandchildren, she continues to volunteer. Today she is an ombudsman at a local nursing home and she shops for groceries for homebound senior citizens.
DeFelice continues to serve her community, too. A Wappingers resident, DeFelice volunteers at Stony Kill and the gift shop at St. Francis Hospital, and donates to the holiday food drive at St. Mary’s Church in Wappingers Falls, where she is a member.
“I am so glad that Central Hudson employees have carried on the food drive,” she said. “There are so many people in need.”
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