The Vanderbilt Museum and Planetarium is collecting food during December for Long Island Cares/The Harry Chapin Food Bank. Visitors can make donations in collection boxes placed in the Planetarium and Museum.
The Harry Chapin Food Bank, which began on Long Island in 1980, today distributes more than eight million pounds of food and supplies annually via more than 590 food pantries, soup kitchens, shelters, group homes, day treatment facilities, senior nutrition sites and day care centers in Nassau and Suffolk Counties.
Seventy-four percent of the Long Island households served by emergency food programs such as those of Long Island Cares/Chapin Food Bank are food-insecure, according to the U.S. government’s official food-security scale.
More than 283,000 – 64,900 people every week –people on Long Island receive emergency food each year. Of that number, 39 percent of the members of households served by Long Island Cares and Island Harvest are children under 18 years old. Ten percent of the members of the total households served are children from newborn to five years old.
Please join us to help feed some our Long Island neighbors.
The most-needed items include all kinds of packaged, non-perishable foods: canned meats and soups, pasta, powdered and evaporated milk, shelf-stable milk and cheeses, dried and canned fruits, juice boxes, jams and jellies, vegetables, grains, healthy snacks, flour and cooking oil, hot and cold cereal, peanut butter, coffee and tea, crackers and baking mixes.
(No glass jars please.)
Also needed: baby formula, diapers and wipes; paper products; laundry soap; pet food and supplies; and personal items including soap, toothpaste and brushes, shampoo and conditioner, brushes, deodorant, adult diapers, and feminine hygiene products.
For a detailed list, click here
