As the school year ends and supply runs low, the Plainsboro Food Pantry is looking for food, monetary donations, and volunteer help to replenish is shelves.
According to Cindy Capritti, the township’s Special Services Coordinator, the pantry is supplemented through a 10-month program the pantry has worked out with a number of the schools in the WW-P school districts in which the schools pick a month and conduct food drives. “That has come to an end, and we are in need of food for the summer,” said Capritti.
At the top of the list of items the pantry needs most are coffee and tea, diapers, milk, rice, adult incontinence pads, and infant formula. “We just don’t get a lot of donations of those particular things,” said Capritti. “There are just things we can get enough of like milk and juice.”
Currently, the pantry serves about 30 households, much more than it used to serve before it began efforts to get the word out about the pantry. Complicating matters is the recession, which has brought more people into the pantry for help. “We’ve got a lot of people who are temporarily unemployed,” she said.
Since it established a trust account at the end of 2009, the food pantry is now also accepting cash donations, which volunteers use to purchase groceries to restock the shelves. Those interested in making cash donations can do so by sending a check made payable to Plainsboro Township (specifying in the memo section that the money is to be used for the pantry). Cash donations “help with buying those items that people just don’t think of,” said Capritti. “Because of our inventory goes up and down, we really do depend on that to try and manage the inventory of food. It’s very helpful to have the cash donations to allow us to continue to do that.”
The pantry gets a lot of help from corporate and local business sponsors and has just sent out more solicitations to try to being in more money.
Capritti said officials are also seeking volunteers to help with sorting food, bagging food for recipients, and distributing the food. Volunteers are needed on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays between 10:30 a.m. and 3 p.m. On the weeks that the volunteers distribute the food, volunteers are needed from 4 to 6 p.m. on Tuesdays, and 2 to 4 p.m. on Thursdays. “We are very flexible about when people come in to volunteer and how often,” said Capritti.
Volunteer applications as well as food pantry applications are located in the municipal building outside the Department of Recreation and Community Services office, which can be obtained any time.
People interested in coordinating a food drive or for more information about donating or getting involved, call 609-799-0909, ext. 1706, for Capritti, or ext. 1702 for the department secretary.
More information and an updated list of needed items is available on Plainsboro Township’s website, www.plainsboronj.com.
