July 2022: The Latest from PORCH

– The Produce Box donated 315 blueberry boxes! Thank you for your generosity. And David from Farmer Foodshare is pictured with a delivery of fresh peaches for our families.

– Chloe Buchholtz and Johnathan Baddour, both rising seniors at Carrboro High School, completed a 10-mile walk through their nonprofit Acts of Kindness – Chapel Hill to raise $6,000 from sponsors, matching funds from a recent grant from RTI International. That grant was written by RTI employee Chris Buchholtz. Chloe also serves as one of our Neighborhood Coordinators. We are so grateful for Chloe and Johnathan’s fundraising efforts on our behalf, doubling the impact of the RTI grant. These funds will help us provide more fresh food and grocery gift cards during the summer months to more than 500 families in our fresh Food for Families program!

– Mother and daughter Katie and Abby Weber helped with our food distribution and jumped in at a moment’s notice to help with three deliveries toward the end of the day! Thank you! Abby is also super involved with Chapel Hill High’s PORCH club. 

– Our thanks to the Chapel Hill High National Honor Society for their recent donation! We are so glad to have this support as we work to combat hunger!

– Young Willa often comes with her father, Dakin, to our food sorts to drop off the non-perishables they collected. Along with mom, Stephanie, and brother, Malcolm, they are PORCH Neighborhood Coordinators in Bel Arbor. During a recent collection within the neighborhood, a group of kids playing outside thought that this volunteer work looked like so much fun that they decided to get in on the action. In all, seven kids pitched in as they took their wagon from porch to porch! Teamwork makes the dream work!

(In the photo, Willa is wearing the pink striped dress, Malcolm is in the red sandals, and Dad is pretty easy to spot!)

– Christina volunteered with us on her birthday! We appreciate her spending her special day helping out!

– We recently began packing halal bags for some of our Food for Families recipients. Halal food is permissible under Islamic law. As our vision statement states, we believe that each person in our Chapel Hill-Carrboro community should have access to sufficient nutritious food to meet their dietary needs for an active, productive, and healthy lifestyle.

– Feedback like this demonstrates why we do what we do: “[With] most of our income, we have to pay for our bills, so we don’t have enough money to buy healthy food. We are so grateful to be part of this program.”
Healthy food has become too expensive or inaccessible for a growing number of families, leaving high-calorie and low-nutrition foods as the only options. We provided 350,000+ pounds of fresh food (milk, eggs, chicken, fruits, and vegetables) to families in 2021, supplementing the non-perishable goods and grocery gift cards that we offer. 

– We were thrilled to welcome two new volunteers to our recent food-sorting shift – Tanya and Charles!

– Summer fun and PORCH fundraising go hand in hand! We are lucky that many locals host lemonade stands to benefit our organization. Read this recent New York Times article about the success of lemonade stands.

– We are thrilled with all of the food we received from the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools Summer Food Drive! We are grateful for the Chapel Hill-Carrboro Public School Foundation in organizing the food drive, all of the fabulous CHCCS families who donated food, and the wonderful school administrators who helped haul and sort the food!

PORCH Chapel Hill-Carrboro received 150+ bags full of food! We will be distributing this food to 500+ CHCCS families who are part of our Food For Families program. They will receive a bag of non-perishable food, a large box of produce, a gallon of milk, two dozen eggs, and a Food Lion gift card. All of this is made possible by our generous community! A special shout out to Northside Elementary – they needed an SUV and a pickup truck to bring their food to Lincoln Center!