The NEEDS pantry is usually stocked with nonperishable food – but it can be difficult to provide our clients with fresh fruits and vegetables. Fortunately, the pantry has a new partner to help meet this need!

Sue Plummer, Ohio Program Coordinator for the Society of St. Andrew – an organization that brings fresh produce to the hungry – recently emailed NEEDS to see if our pantry could benefit from produce donations collected from growers at the end of the weekly Montgomery Farmers Market. Sue didn’t have to ask twice! NEEDS’ first pickup was on May 1, the day the market opened for the 2021 season. In rotation with a few other pantries, NEEDS will continue to pick up donations from the market through October.

A big thank you to the Society of St. Andrew and the Montgomery Farmers Market for sharing fresh fruits and vegetables with our clients!

NEEDS is grateful for the support of a variety of local organizations – including churches, schools, businesses, and more.

The Madeira High School Key Club recently organized a food drive to benefit NEEDS, and soon filled an SUV with some of the pantry’s most-needed items. This is not the first time the Key Club has collected donations for NEEDS. Thank you to the Key Club for your ongoing support!

Another drive was held at the Twin Lakes Senior Living Community. This drive was so successful that the overflow of donations had to be stored in a vacant unit at Twin Lakes! As pantry coordinators Maureen and Janie point out, quite a few of NEEDS’ clients are the same age as the residents at Twin Lakes. Instead of enjoying retirement, many clients are now housing and feeding their adult children who have lost jobs and moved back home, as well as grandchildren. Others, with no family nearby, are struggling alone to make ends meet. The donations shared by Twin Lakes will help many of these individuals and families.

Finally, Montgomery Community Church selected NEEDS as one of several local pantries to benefit from their monthly food drive. MCC often provides financial support to NEEDS as well, and we are very happy to have MCC as a partner.

Last month, we shared a story about Victoria, who celebrated her birthday by holding a food drive for the NEEDS pantry. Thanks to a generous donation of “birthday bags” from the Birthday Giving Program, NEEDS can now help clients’ children celebrate their birthdays too! NEEDS is giving a bag to each family with a child aged 6-12 who has an upcoming birthday. The bags are a wonderful surprise for the children and their parents, who usually can’t afford large parties and gifts.

The Birthday Giving Program was launched in 2017 as a way to brighten the lives of children and adults affected by poverty, addiction, abuse, physical and mental challenges, and old age. The program is now active in 36 states, and NEEDS is thrilled to be one of the 90 organizations to benefit!

For more information about the Birthday Giving Program, visit https://birthdaygivingprogram.club/.

It’s always a joy to see children and their families serving their community together. Earlier this month, the students at All Saints School made an incredible contribution to NEEDS – one of the largest donations in our 40-year history!

It all began with a suggestion from staff member Lisa Leonard: why not hold a contest between grades K-8 to see who could collect the most donations? Students, parents, and faculty all got involved to gather and organize food for the NEEDS pantry. The results? More than 700 boxes of cereal, over 400 jars of peanut butter, and a multitude of other canned goods were delivered to NEEDS! This amazing contribution will go a long way toward providing meals for the 1000+ families served by NEEDS each year.

NEEDS volunteers were overwhelmed not only by the size of the donation, but by the energy and enthusiasm of the All Saints community. Thank you so much to the families and staff who made this drive such an amazing success!

Madeira Elementary School recently held a food drive to benefit NEEDS. One student was so inspired that she chose to celebrate her birthday by giving back even more!

Victoria Jackson is celebrating a very special birthday this year: not only is she turning 10, but her her birthday falls on Earth Day. To mark the occasion, Victoria distributed bags and flyers requesting donations for the NEEDS pantry. “I want to do something special for people I will probably never meet…Cincinnati friends that are not as lucky as me,” Victoria wrote. With help from her brother Hogan, she then collected the filled bags and loaded up a waiting SUV for a drop-off at the NEEDS pantry.

What a wonderful way to celebrate a birthday! Thank you, Victoria and Hogan!

One way that NEEDS reaches potential clients and donors is by distributing brochures to local organizations. Recently, NEEDS realized that our materials were due for a refresh – and Amelia Riedel of Riedel Creative Group offered to help, at no charge! We are tremendously grateful to Amelia for her generous gift of photography and graphic design services in the development of our new letterhead package and brochure. We’re so proud of our new, updated look!

For more information about the services Riedel Creative Group can provide, please contact Amelia at ariedel@riedelcreativegroup.com. Thank you, Amelia!