Socks & Underwear - Remember to bring your new socks and underwear for our back-to-School event for collection after mass this weekend.
30 Volunteers needed for Back-to-School (see below for many more details) - Sign-up for one or both time blocks on 7/29 HERE. To sign-up for the entire afternoon, you may have to sign-up for one, exit and re-enter the sheet to sign up for the other half.
Summer Meal Program was a big success.
Back-to-School - Summer is not over yet! Our Back-to-School event taking place from noon to 5:30 pm on Thursday, July 29 at InTown Suites. We need 30 volunteers. If you can help, here is the SIGN-UP LINK. On the sign-up sheet, you will see two time slots for the July 29 event - one for the early portion of the afternoon and one for the latter half. Ideally, I would like as many volunteers as possible to sign-up for both slots (the entire afternoon) to reduce the number of "moving parts" for the event; however, the most important thing is to cover the event, so if you are only available for one half, please sign-up accordingly.
Why so many volunteers? As I mentioned in my last email, we wanted to make this year's Back-to-School event bigger than just distributing school supplies. We are blessed in that In addition to working with the WPNCF to distribute backpacks, school supplies, socks, and underwear we are also offering the following:
- Mobile COVID-19 Vaccine Service from Orange County Public Health.
- A food truck from 4 Rivers (pre-registered guests with school children will have their meals paid for).
- Produce offered to pre-registered guests from the 4 Roots subsidiary of 4 Rivers
- Books for the pre-registered children.
- Orange County Public School staff to register children not currently in OCPS records.
- A "Prayer Table" where we will distribute baked goods with a prayer card as well as an invitation to contact SMM Lazarus Ministry.
While all of the above will be available to families who pre-register with WPNCF, the vaccine service will be available to whomever in the surrounding community comes to receive a vaccine. Those who come for vaccines may also purchase food from 4 Rivers food truck.
Volunteers will set up the event, man and help organize the various stations, and help control traffic. All volunteers will be helping to make this a big day for children living with their families in hotels as they embark on what will hopefully be a more typical school year.
Also, any volunteers who have shade tents that they could allow is to use at the event should let me know by replying to this email.
Please email me: [email protected] with any questions, comments, or suggestions. You may also call me at 4079082031.
Summer Meals: This week brings to a close our providing meals to families at InTown Suites. Our last meal delivery for the summer will be this Thursday. This summer, thirty-five SMM Volunteers will have delivered 1150 servings of Al Ronelli's delicious and nutritious food from the SMM Kitchen to 90 different families over the course of the summer. Thanks to all the volunteers, to Al Ronelli, to the staff at Winter Park Neighborhoods Center for Families (WPNCF), and to the supportive management at InTown we have helped families with food that also enabled the families a bit more financial space to meet their other needs.
