Our residents are passionate about coordinating their activities to support other organizations. This is why we love our partnership with Kids’ Food Basket. For many years, residents from The Warm Friend and Maple Woods have volunteered with Kids’ Food Basket.
Warm Friend resident Marianne Daubenspeck said, “Volunteering for Kids’ Food Basket is a joy, one of the joys of living at The Warm Friend.”
Kids’ Food Basket sack supper program supports food-insecure children by ensuring they have an evening meal both during the school year and in the summer. Kids’ Food Basket Program Manager Jane Berkey said, “Resthaven residents have volunteered with Kids’ Food Basket for many years. They are wonderful to work with and help us each time that they come to catch up on the little things that make a huge difference in our day to day operations: making trail mix, putting pudding cups into crates, separating cheese stick to put into crates, stickering bags for our Break Bags and many other tasks.”
Besides going to Kids’ Food Basket, residents at Maple Woods and The Warm Friend decorate sack supper paper bags every single week. As one Warm Friend resident said, “It’s something creative for us to do that makes it more fun for the kids.” A Resthaven volunteer, Julie comes in every week to coordinate the craft time at Maple Woods Cottage. She uses different supplies each time to make the decorating more fun and every week is able to deliver a stack of decorated paper bags to pack the sack suppers in.
This spring, Warm Friend residents collaborated with local artist Carolyn Stich, winner of the 2019 Tulip Time Festival Poster Competition. Carolyn also volunteers to decorate bags for Kids’ Food Basket and Warm Friend residents walked to her studio to color illustrations Carolyn drew on the bags. It was a fun day with Cherry Republic donating tasty treats.
Carolyn Stich loves to give back to the community because she feels it has blessed her. This is why she has enjoyed being involved with local organizations such as Kids’ Food Basket and Resthaven. She said, “I am glad that I can make people smile with some of the bags. Decorating the bags tells kids that someone spent time just on them.”
She loved having residents from the Warm Friend over to her studio to help. “I love the idea of the older generation and the younger generation coming together,” she said.