General News

Due to Hurricane Florence, PORCH-Chapel Hill is cancelling all activities scheduled for Monday, September 17. This means: NO neighborhood food drives; NO food sort at St Thomas More Catholic Church; NO pantry deliveries; and NO fresh food deliveries to families at Morris Grove Elementary School, Carrboro Elementary School, or Homestead Aquatic Center.

To offset the loss, in October PORCH will be adding gift cards to the bags of fresh food provided to 400 families in our Food for Families program. The gift cards will assist families skimping on food this month due to the double whammy of no PORCH food combined with several days of no free/reduced price school meals for their children.

To help PORCH give a “little extra” food in October, please consider making a cash donation NOW.  Online donations can be made here. Or, mail a check (payable to PORCH-Chapel Hill) to PO Box 16363, Chapel Hill, NC 27516.

If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to email Susan at susan@porchcommunities.org or call her at 919-619-3408.

Your generous support is always appreciated, now more than ever.

Be safe,

Christine, Debbie, and Susan

With the new school year upon us, PORCH Chapel Hill-Carrboro would like to thank our Food for Schools (FFS) sponsors for the 19 public schools and the pre-kindergarten program in our school district. With the support of these local businesses, we are able to provide a generous supply of healthy snacks for students needing additional nourishment to tide them over during the school day.

“Teachers and social workers often reach into their own pockets to offer snacks to hungry students,” explains FFS Coordinator Lynn Scattolini. “We are so fortunate here in Chapel Hill-Carrboro to have the backing of our generous business community to help defray that cost.”

Our Food for Schools Sponsors are:

• Amy Guskiewicz, Fonville Morisey Realty
• Chapel Hill-Carrboro Sunrise Rotary Club
• Elefante Financial Services
• Ellis Family Dentistry
• Erika Buchholtz, Erika & Co. for Your Home
• Frederick G. Lehmann, DDS PA
• FurnitureLab
• Great Clips – Carrboro Plaza and Meadowmont
• Holy Trinity Lutheran Church Outreach Ministry
• Kitchen & Bath Galleries
• Martha Newport Realty Group
• Meadowmont Dentistry
• Scroggs Family
• Southern Village Pharmacy
• Stuckey & Boyd Financial Services
• Caren Parker, Terra Nova Global Properties Inc.
• The Christine Khoury Team
• Tony Hall & Associates, Residential Real Estate

For information on sponsoring snacks in a local after-school program, contact Becky Hebert.

Once again, PORCH is partnering with the Food for the Summer coalition to lend some helping hands with meal deliveries to community centers and camp sites serving at-risk kids. Launched by Chapel Hill Mayor Pam Hemminger last summer, the coalition includes the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools, UNC, No Kid Hungry, and local businesses and hunger relief organizations. Learn more about the collaborative hunger relief effort in this recent Durham Herald Sun article. Sign up for a meal delivery here. Service leaning hours are available for high school students.

On Saturday, June 3rd, sixteen PORCH volunteers partnered with the Diaper Bank of North Carolina to distribute free diapers to military families in Fayetteville. Watch this video about the event. With little wiggle room in family budgets, the diapers free up resources for other basic items such as rent, food, utilities, child care, and transportation. PORCH looks forward to partnering with the Diaper Bank in coming months to get free diapers distributed to some of the 380 families participating in our Food for Families program.

Over 6,000 children could go hungry at some point this summer in Orange County, according to hunger relief agencies.

While many receive free and reduced-price breakfast and lunch during the school year — about 30 percent of Chapel Hill-Carrboro City students and roughly 44 percent of Orange County students — the programs break for summer, leaving families to pick up the cost.

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