Can Openers for Northeast Community Fund
Our Administrative Assistant, Kathleen Dudley, is organizing a can opener drive for Northeast Community Fund. Look for a collection bucket soon! Can openers will be delivered to Northeast Community Fund on December 13th, and the goal is 800 can openers (to match the number of Christmas baskets that Northeast will give out in December). Here’s a little bit more about her “why”….
Why can openers?
Imagine for a second that you have a house fire, or a tornado or hurricane comes along and destroys your home, or you’re leaving a situation of domestic violence, and all of a sudden, you have nothing. One of your first stops is probably a food pantry to get food, and what can they offer the most of? Canned food. What do you need to open the canned food? A can opener. The least expensive cans of food don’t generally have pop tops on them (because they’re more expensive to manufacture), so most of what food pantries get doesn’t have pop tops.
Now, I don’t know about you, but a can opener is not an item I would think to grab in a house fire or other crisis. Logic would also dictate that if a family doesn’t have money for food, they may not have money to buy a can opener to open the food.
I’ve never been in this situation. I’ve been blessed and privileged in my life to where I’ve never had to think about owning a can opener, except for when our electric can openers wore out, but even when that happened, we still had other food to eat.
Over the past 2 years, there’s been a Facebook post going around with things to think about when you donate to a food pantry, and one of those items stated that pop top cans are preferred by food pantry clients, because pop tops don’t require a can opener to consume. That thought really made an impression on me. I’ve never been in a situation where in order to eat, I had to have a can opener. It’s really an essential item, but how often do we think about donating can openers to the food pantry?
This need was laid on my heart, but I don’t always believe what I read on Facebook, so I called the Northeast Community Fund in late October and spoke with the Assistant Director, Sharon, and she confirmed that, yes, this is a big need. She sounded enthusiastic about the idea as we continued to talk, and she suggested that I could do a drive to coincide with their Christmas basket giveaway. So… here I am, jumping in. I’m focusing on collecting manual can openers, as they’re more practical for the purpose of handing out with the Christmas baskets, but I also know that there are clients of the food pantries who, for reasons like arthritis, disability, etc., who would have a hard time using a manual can opener and for whom an electric can opener would be such a blessing, so I’m not refusing those if they are donated.
I hope you will consider donating a can opener or two for Northeast Community Fund. More details to come!
-Kathleen M. Dudley, 11/5/2024
