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I would like to take this opportunity to THANK ALL our wonderful volunteers who give so much of their time and talents to help fulfill WCHI’s Mission: To alleviate food insecurity in Whitehall and Coplay. One of our programs is our Food Pantry, which provides food the 2nd Thursday of every month.
WCHI’s Pantry is in the Christ the King School on the St John the Baptist Church property, 3024 S Ruch St, Whitehall. Since January 14, 2021, due to Covid, we have officially been providing food from the parking lot every month from 11am-1pm and 5:30-7 pm. All along we planned on having inside pantry distributions. Again, due to covid, we had to postpone bringing the operations inside twice in both September and again in January. One of our volunteers orders 3,000-6000 pounds of food every week from Second Harvest. Another volunteer goes to Second Harvest to bring the food to the Pantry. And we are super thankful several volunteers unload all the cases of food and bring them down the basement steps into our Pantry. We are also grateful for public donations, too. The food is them separated and placed at various locations in our Pantry. A volunteer also goes to the Center for Animal Health and Welfare once a month to pick up dog and cat food. Our Pantry was set up like a food warehouse with food located at specific locations on pallets and then the food was moved to rolling racks. For these monthly distributions, volunteers had to bag a minimum of 300 bags of food for several food stations throughout our distribution production line. For example, there may be 8 food stations. Each station had several food items in that one bag per station. And every guest received the same food at station 1. Station 2 had totally different food, but again 300 bags had been prebagged, and so on and so on until the guest finished our distribution table line and exited the parking lot onto Chestnut St. The morning of these distributions, all this food had to be manually brought out of the basement, up steps, and put into shopping carts. The carts were then rolled down the driveway to the corresponding tables in the parking lot that the specific food needed to be stationed at. This whole operation was labor intensive. The guests all received 7 or 8 bags of different food items, but every guest went home with the same food as the household before and after them. Thankfully, after an 18 month wait, WCHI finally received approval to open our “CHOICE” Pantry for May 12th. During our April 14th distribution, every household that attended was given an appointment card with an agreed specific time to come to the Pantry. We also mailed a postcard to every household who attended our Pantry during January through March 2022. Guests were told they needed to have a scheduled appointment to attend last week. We received many calls last week verifying appointment times and scheduling new ones for the guests who were not at the April distribution. We officially opened our inside “CHOICE” Pantry on Thursday, May 12th from 9:30am-7pm. Our guests now come inside our Pantry during their scheduled time, get registered, and are paired with a volunteer to physically go shopping for food on a specific route throughout the Pantry. We have rolling racks set up like store shelves with specific food items on them. The amount of food a guest can take is based on the number of people in their household. After they selected their food, another volunteer takes the shopping cart to the guest’s car and helps unload it. Our guests now have the luxury of selecting the food items that they will eat and do not have to take food that they won’t eat (like the prebagged ones in April). Last week’s Pantry transition was a huge success. Thankfully, we also had great sunny weather. Our guests were happy with the food they selected. We served 216 households, both 332 children, 332 adults, and 138 seniors for a total of 802 people. We had 46 households that were registered but were no shows. We did receive several calls, voicemails, and texts on Thursday, but could not handle the volume of calls while completing Thursday’s distribution process. Our guests can call 484-225-0358 to schedule an appointment for June 9th, but we cannot handle changes or calls the day of the distribution. Again, WCHI could never do a project of this magnitude without all the many, many hours of hard work and dedication by our selfless volunteers. They do all this from the goodness in their hearts and they are so happy to be helping so many Whitehall and Coplay residents. Thank you again to all our volunteers!! You are WCHI!!
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WCHI is so excited to finally provide inside food distributions for our Pantry guests. They will now be able to choose the foods they will eat from our inventory. We are not a food store and are limited with food items that we can provide.
Previously, we had pre-bagged food items, and everyone received the same food. Guests will now have a larger choice of food. Our inside distribution occurs on Thursday, May 12 th after the newspaper’s delivery. I will have an update for you in next week’s article. Our next Free Community Meal is hosted by Whitehall Bible Fellowship Church, 3300 7 th St, Whitehall on Tuesday, May 17 th from 4-6:30 pm. They are providing a delicious hot meal and guests can either come in and eat inside or take out is available. Meals are guaranteed for the 1 st 100 guests. Once the food has been given out, the doors will be closed. For more info, please call Bible Fellowship Church 610-434-8861 or Karen Haberern, Free Community Meal Chair, 610-730- 3184. WCHI is pleased to have wonderful volunteers to plant and maintain our vegetable raised beds at our WCHI Garden at the Mickley-Prydun Farm. We have a few raised beds still available for volunteers to cultivate. WCHI provides everything. We just need a couple more gardeners to help with a bed or two. These come in varying sizes. The grown vegetables are given to the children attending our Children’s Summer Feeding Program (CSFP). When the children return to school on August 29 th , the vegetables are then given to our pantry guests until the end of the growing season in October. If you are interested or have questions, please call 484-225-0358. WCHI provides this Children’s Summer Feeding Program (CSFP) for Whitehall and Coplay Low Income Residents ONLY and there are income limit requirements. A valid driver’s license or utility bill is required to register. The parent must register the children. The CSFP will run from June 15 th though August 24 th every Monday and Wednesday 10-11 am. Once registered, the children or parent may pick up the food. Please note: if the parent is working during the Monday and Wednesday 10-11 am food distribution, WCHI will accommodate you by providing the parent with the five bags of food per child at our Whitehall Food Pantry Location, 3024 S Ruch St, Whitehall in the parking lot by our shed on Wednesday evenings 6-7pm during the 10.5-week program. This year’s CSFP highlights include providing shelf stable food for 5 breakfast and 5 lunches. This will be a drop and go food distribution. On Mondays every child will receive shelf stable food for a breakfast and a lunch for Monday and Tuesday. On Wednesday, each child will receive shelf stable food for a breakfast and lunch for Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. WCHI will also provide children with: Free books for children all summer; Christmas in July presents; and Free filled Backpacks for school in August. We are having four CSFP location sites this this year. We would like as many parents as possible to pre-register for two reasons – 1. It reminds the households that this program will be held again this summer. - 2. It lets us know how many bags to prepack for each site location. These four sites are at the same locations as last year. (The Egypt and Clementon Sites were not utilized enough last year to keep them open again in 2022). Please register at the site closest to your home’s location and note the pre- registration Days and Times: • Mickley Run Apts, Whitehall, Parking lot closest to the 350 building off Overlook Rd) -Tuesday, May 17 th , 5-7 pm • Redeemed Christian Church of God, 5 N 3 rd St, Coplay -Thursday, May 19 th , 5-7 pm • Maryland Circle Apts, 1 Maryland Circle, Whitehall -Thursday May 19 th , 5-7 pm • St John’s Lutheran Church, 835 N 3 rd St, Whitehall - Saturday, May 21, 11am-1pm Questions, please call Sue Butchinski, Children’s Summer Feeding Program Chair, 484-767-6022 Have a great week!! This article is to explain our Grand Opening procedures for the Inside Pantry Guest food distribution on Thursday, May 12th from 9:30am-7:00pm. A scheduled appointment is now required. If you need an appointment, please call
484-225-0358 ASAP to accommodate you on May 12th. Both our Pantry Guests and Volunteers will take part in a totally new and exciting shopping experience. These are our procedures.
Please call 484-225-0358 to register an appointment or to ask any questions you may have. Thank you and have a great week!! WCHI had a very successful pantry distribution on both April 13th evening and April 14th morning. (We did not hold a Thursday evening distribution due to the Church needing their parking lot for their Maundy Thursday church service). Wednesday evening was extremely busy. And we also had a great attendance on Thursday morning. WCHI was delighted to provide food and toiletries to 233 households comprised of 837 people; 348 children, 353 adults, and 136 seniors (age 60+)!! We also registered 13 new households.
Since last June, we have been planning to have inside Pantry distributions starting last September. Due to past increasing cases of Covid-19, it just was not safe for our guests to come inside, and therefore, the grand opening kept getting pushed back from September to January. Then we were pushed back again to May. Starting on May 12th, WCHI finally will have inside pantry operations. This is so exciting for both our volunteers and guests. Every guest must have a scheduled appointment to keep proper social distancing in our pantry space. During the April pantry registration process, every guest was given an appointment card with their specific time to keep as a reminder. Our new process was explained to each household that attended our April pantry food distribution. If you do not have a current appointment, please call 484-225-0358. I will give you more information every week leading up to the May 12th grand opening!! Another exciting program we do is planting, cultivating, and providing fresh vegetables from our WCHI garden at the Mickley Prydun Farm. For the last two years, tomatoes, zucchini, banana peppers, string beans, cucumbers and tomatoes were grown and donated to our Children’s Summer Feeding Program children and in the fall to our Pantry guests. It takes a few hands to feed a village and we could use more volunteers to take a specific raised bed or two to plant and maintain that specific bed for the planting season. We provide all the materials for the garden including the soil, tools, plants/seeds, etc. The Hokey Fire Dept will provide the water. We have 17 raised beds of varying sizes to plant. For example, we have (6) 8’x2.5‘; (1) 8’x3’ (2) 14.5’x3’; (3) 2.5’x8’; (1) 7’x7’; (2) 25’x2.5’; and (2) 23.5’x3’ beds. These larger ones can be divided to smaller plots. If you are interested in taking a raised bed or have questions, please call 484-225-0358 for more information. Also, WCHI is in need a new webmaster. Our website is fully established. This is not time consuming, and we have written updates, usually quarterly as we move throughout the year with our specific programs. This mainly is a cut and paste type operation. If interested, please call 484-225-0358 for more information. Thank you and have a great week. I will be writing several future articles with information obtained and referenced from Second Harvest Food Bank (SHFB), Feeding Pennsylvania (FP), and Feeding America (FA). In February, I mentioned that Second Harvest is collaborating with three Lehigh County Food Pantries with their Healthy Pantry Initiative (HPI) grant. Whitehall-Coplay Hunger Initiative is excited or be chosen as one of them.
Khushboo Jain, Nutrition Educator at SHFB says “The goal of HPI is to reduce long-term burden of diet related diseases through a “beyond food” approach.” The “beyond food” approach aims to devise long-term solutions to food insecurity by addressing all the factors that cause poverty (employment, wages, and other socioeconomic factors). So while providing participants with nutritious food is essential, HPI also supports our pantries with a network of community organizations so they can offer or refer participants to other services they may need to break that cycle of food insecurity.” Below is to explain the cycle of food insecurity and chronic disease mentioned by Khushboo. This info comes directly from Feeding America https://tinyurl.com/2p9b5xbh “The Hunger in America 2014 study found that many households served by the Feeding America® network of food banks include people coping with a diet-related chronic disease. Fifty-eight percent of households reported having at least one member with high blood pressure and 33 percent had at least one member with diabetes. The cycle of food insecurity and chronic disease begins when an individual or family cannot afford enough nutritious food. The combination of stress and poor nutrition can make disease management even more challenging. Further, the time and money needed to respond to these health conditions strains the household budget, leaving little money for essential nutrition and medical care. This causes the cycle to continue, increasing the risk of worsening existing conditions. Many families experiencing food insecurity often have several, if not all, compounding factors, which make maintaining good health extremely difficult.” WCHI has seen first-hand what compounding factors affect our Pantry guests. All are on fixed incomes. Our guests tell us they have to choose between food and a myriad of other expenses i.e. medicine and medical care; housing expenses: rent, taxes, and utilities. Current gas and food prices are also affecting them. Feeding America continues on with the above article, “households must use coping strategies to meet their food needs, including: Purchasing inexpensive, unhealthy food (79%), Receiving help from friends (53%); Watering down food or drinks (40%), Selling or pawning personal property (35%), and growing food in a garden (23%). More than half (55%) of households served by the Feeding America network, reported having to use three or more coping strategies to deal with tough financial choices. Some of these coping strategies may support one’s health, but others that make sense in the short term can be detrimental to health in the long term. This is particularly true in households with children and among people who are already coping with a diet-related, chronic disease.” Every month during our food distribution, our guests comment how grateful they are that WCHI is here to help them. All our volunteers understand the stresses our guests are experiencing as mentioned above. WCHI is proud to be achieving Our Mission: To alleviate food insecurity in Whitehall and Coplay. Thank you for reading my article and have a great week!!! IMPORTANT REMINDER ABOUT WCHI’S APRIL FOOD PANTRY DISTRIBUTION DATES: Due to April 14th being a Holy Day, St John the Baptist Church has services in the evening and WCHI CANNOT provide our Food distribution on Thursday night. Instead the night distribution will be held on Wednesday, April 13th from 5:30-7:00pm. There is NO change for Thursday morning. Thursday, April 14th daytime distribution will remain as always 11am-1pm.
NOTE: WCHI is planning on moving our outdoor operations inside for the Thursday, May 12th food distribution with specified appointment times. Every guest attending either the April 13th or the April 14th food distribution will be given an appointment time card with a time slot for May. For guests who cannot attend our April distribution, please call me to schedule an appointment. This move indoors is very exciting. And I will share more information as we get closer to the May distribution. SPRING is here! Do you love to garden? The Whitehall-Coplay Hunger Initiative is in search of gardening enthusiasts who would enjoy adopting a raised garden bed in the WCHI GARDEN located at the Mickley-Prydun Farm, 3540 Ruch St, Whitehall. Individuals, families, community and faith based groups are invited to plant and maintain a raised garden bed throughout the 2022 growing season. We had a successful meeting at my office on Friday!! The WCHI will provide the soil, seeds and/or plants and a small sign at each bed thanking the gardener for participating at our garden. Water for the garden will be available thanks to the Hokendauqua Fire Department. The volunteer gardeners will provide the physical work, energy and fun needed to harvest a bounty of produce. 16 small raised beds are available for planting. All harvested produce will be given to Whitehall and Coplay residents in need through our WCHI Children’s Summer Feeding Program and our WCHI Food Pantry. Interested volunteers should register at https://tinyurl.com/WCHIvolunteer All adult volunteers must complete state mandated child abuse clearances https://tinyurl.com/WCHIforms Organize a group and adopt a raised garden bed! You’ll be gardening next to the house that was once the home of John Jacob Mickley, Sr., who brought the Liberty Bell by wagon from Philadelphia to Allentown for safekeeping from British troops during the Revolutionary War. Our garden can also be seen from the Ironton Rail Trail. WCHI is in need of a used, but reliable lawnmower for the garden. And we always need toiletries for our Pantry distributions including: Baby and Adult Diapers, Feminine Products, Men’s and Women’s Razors, Men’s Shaving Cream, Shampoo & Conditioner, Soap, Tissues, Toilet Paper, Toothpaste, and Toothbrushes. All Donations are appreciated and may be shipped or dropped off at Re/Max Unlimited Real Estate, 1080 Schadt Ave, Whitehall, PA 18052. Please leave your donations inside the foyer on the right, Monday through Friday 9AM- 5PM, Saturday 9AM-1PM & Sunday 10AM-1PM. Please call me on any of the above items. Thank you, as always, for your continued support. Please note the following April dates:
Friday, April 1st at 11am, WCHI Vegetable Garden Meeting for anyone interested in volunteering at our garden this year. This meeting will be at my Re/Max office, 1080 Schadt Ave, Whitehall. Sunday, April 3rd -Free Community Meal at Faith Lutheran Church, 3355 MacArthur Rd, Whitehall 4:00-6:30pm, guaranteed for the 1st 100 guests. Call Judy for more info 610-554-3569. Sunday, April 10th -WCHI Bingo at St Peter Church, 4 South 5th St, Coplay. Bingo doors open at 1pm and calling starts at 2pm. Call Liz for more info 484-274-6687. FOOD PANTRY IMPORTANT APRIL DATES: Due to April 14th being a Holy Day, St John the Baptist has Church services in the evening and WCHI CANNOT provide our Food distribution Thursday night. Instead the night distribution will be held on Wednesday, April 13th from 5:30-7:00 pm. There is NO change for Thursday morning. Thursday, April 14th daytime distribution will remain as always 11am-1pm. NOTE: WCHI is planning on moving our outdoor operations inside for the Thursday, May 12th food distribution with specified appointment times. Every guest attending either the April 13th or the April 14th food distribution will be given an appointment time card with a time slot for May. For guests who cannot attend our April distribution, please call me to schedule an appointment. For our guests, who have mobility issues, don’t worry. We will have an ordering form available for you to complete during your scheduled time in May. A WCHI volunteer will shop for you and bring the food to your car in the Church parking lot. This move indoors is very exciting. And I will share more information as we get closer to the May distribution. WCHI provides several outreach programs including: our Food Pantry; our Snack Pack Pal Program for both WCSD and St Elizabeth’s Regional School; our Children’s Summer Feeding Program (CSFP), which operates for 10.5 weeks over the summer when school is closed at four locations -three in Whitehall and one in Coplay; our WCHI Vegetable Garden; our Free Community Meals (FCM), and our Bingo. Other than the FCM and Bingo, all our programs require clearances. See below under Volunteers Needed. We do need Spanish and Arabic translators to help us communicate at both our Food Pantry and CSFP. Please call me for more info. No child abuse clearances are required for this specific translating service. MORE VOLUNTEERS NEEDED -WCHI is 100% volunteer and WCHI could never do any of our community outreach programs without their selfless support and time. WCHI has 70 cleared volunteers and we could use many more dedicated people. Our WCHI programs help so many residents. All volunteers must have state required background clearances (Required by PA State Law) plus some WCHI clearances since we come in contact with children. For a full list of our requirements, please go to https://tinyurl.com/WCHIforms and to register https://tinyurl.com/WCHIvolunteer. Once obtained, these clearances are good for 5 years. Questions: please Contact Sylvia at [email protected] Can YOU offer your time and talents? I thank you in advance for helping WCHI to accomplish Our Mission: To alleviate food insecurity in Whitehall and Coplay. Do you like to garden and have a few hours a week to help us at our WCHI Garden at the Mickley-Prydun Farm? A kick-off meeting is scheduled for Friday, April 1st at 11am at my Re/Max Unlimited Office, 1080 Schadt Ave, Whitehall. All produce grown is given throughout the summer to our Children’s Summer Feeding Program (CSFP) and then to our Pantry guests once the CSFP is finished & the children return to school. Full child abuse clearances are required. https://tinyurl.com/WCHIforms Once obtained, the clearances are good for 5 years.
Thank you to both Faith Lutheran Church, for hosting our Free Community Meal on Sunday, April 3rd and to St John’s Lutheran Church on Sunday, May 1st. These free meals are available from 4:00-6:30pm and are guaranteed for the 1st 100 guests. More info on these meals will be shared as we get closer to the dates and will be posted on Facebook. We currently have 7 available meal dates for the rest of 2022: April 19th, July 3rd, July 19th, August 7th, September 4th, October 2nd, and December 4th. Please contact me if your faith based organization can host a meal for any of these available dates. Thank you!! Our selfless volunteers currently pre- bag all our food for outside Pantry distributions. Our Grand Opening on May 12th is to accomplish two things: 1. Introduce our guests to our model of Feeding America’s Healthy Pantry Initiative’s (HPI) and 2. Move our distribution inside our Pantry. Our Pantry guests will then be able to select a certain number of food items from each food group that appeals to them. Everyone will have a scheduled Pantry time. We will give our guests their appointment time at our April 14th distribution. For our guests, who have mobility issues, don’t worry. We will have an ordering form available for you to complete during your scheduled time. A WCHI volunteer will shop for you and bring the food to your car in the Church parking lot. I will share more exciting news on our HPI during the next few weeks. Please note: WCHI is reorganizing our Pantry space and have dedicated shelving and specific food group items tailored to follow best practice recommendations from Feeding America. Our shelves will be packed with cases of specific food and not individual cans when we open in May. All our food is currently ordered through Second Harvest. WCHI appreciates all the food donations the public, school groups, and organizations have provided for Pantry distributions over the years and the ones you are currently doing. Please coordinate with me for delivery by April 29th. After this date, we will not be collecting food items for the Pantry. We have removed the Pantry food items we were collecting from our website. However, for the Pantry we are desperately in need of toiletries for our guests. People cannot obtain toiletry items with SNAP or WIC benefits. And many Seniors do not have discretionary money to purchase toiletries. These are the items most needed: Baby and Adult Diapers, Feminine Products, Men’s and Women’s Razors, Men’s Shaving Cream, Shampoo & Conditioner, Soap, Tissues, Toilet Paper, Toothpaste, and Toothbrushes. We ARE still collecting specific food items for Snack Pack Pals (SPP) during the school year and will also continue to collect food items for our Children’s Summer Feeding Program (CSFP). SPP items are on our website https://tinyurl.com/SnackPackPals and CSFP products will be added in mid-May. These items are still pre-bagged and do not take up shelving space, just pallet space. All product and monetary donations are appreciated and may be dropped off, mailed, or shipped to WCHI c/o Shari Noctor at Re/Max Unlimited Real Estate, 1080 Schadt Ave, Whitehall, PA 18052. Our next Free Community Meal will be this Tuesday, March 15th from 4:00-6:30 pm at St. Elizabeth of Hungary Catholic Church, 618 Fullerton Ave, Whitehall. Guests have the option of sitting down for the meal or doing take out. The meal is Shepherd’s Pie. The meal is guaranteed for the first 100 guests. Questions, please call 610-266-0695
Please note: We do not have any meals scheduled for April 3rd, April 19th, or May 1st. If any faith based organization is willing to do a meal on any of these days, please call me asap. Thank You.. WCHI had a sunny and warm day on March 10th for our Pantry Food Distribution. We all were so glad it snowed and rained the day before. We provided our guests with food and toiletries non-stop for both the morning and the evening distributions. WCHI is very happy to be helping so many households during these tough times. Our guests are all on fixed incomes and these escalating commodity prices are reducing their available money left for food, gas, medicine, rent, property taxes, and car/property insurance. Both WCHI and our guests are thrilled we have a Pantry to help our low income residents. THANK YOU, Monsignor Gobitas, St John the Baptist Church, and the Diocese of Allentown!!! On 3/10/22, WCHI served 241 households comprised of 884 residents; 369 children, 375 adults, and 140 seniors (age 60+); Morning distribution 179 households, Evening Distribution 62 households; and we also registered 31 new households. Several times a year, I like to share our opening day data as a comparison. When we opened last year on 1/11/21, we served and registered 91 households comprised of 308 residents; 113 children, 141 adults, and 54 seniors. We have come a long way and are so grateful we can help so many residents in need. They all are so appreciative. We can never help so many people without our wonderful, dedicated volunteers of all ages. WCHI needs more volunteers to help us with all of our programs including, but not limited to: our Food Pantry, Garden at Mickley-Prydun Farm, Children's Summer Feeding Program, Mickley Run Apartment Outreach, and our Snack Pack Pals program at both the Whitehall-Coplay School District and at St Elizabeth’s Regional School. We have day and evening opportunities available year round. We do have volunteers that help with all our programs and others who only work with certain ones. If you can volunteer, we would greatly appreciate it. WCHI does require several clearances, which are not hard to complete. Most of them can be completed on-line and you go at your own pace. You will need a computer with internet access. Whitehall and Coplay libraries have computers you can use. There are additional clearances if you are a Catholic parishioner since our Pantry is located on Church property, whether you volunteer at our Pantry or at one of our off site programs. Once you have adult clearances, they are good for 5 years. And there are minimal clearances required if you are a student, 12-17 years old. Note: Our bi-monthly Free Community Meal requirements, if any, will be at the sole discretion of the host meal site. None of the WCHI requirements pertain to our Community Meal Program. Please review our required clearances at https://tinyurl.com/WCHIforms Also, please sign-up at https://tinyurl.com/WCHIvolunteer so we know you are interested in becoming a WCHI volunteer. Once our Volunteer Coordinator, Sylvia Lee, receives all your clearances, she will place you our volunteer opportunity schedule. Volunteer questions, please contact Sylvia at [email protected] WCHI Needs Toiletry Items for our Pantry guests which include: Baby and Adult Diapers, Feminine Products, Shampoo & Conditioner, Men’s and Women’s razors, and men’s shaving cream. All Donations are appreciated and may be shipped or dropped off at Re/Max Unlimited Real Estate, 1080 Schadt Ave, Whitehall, PA 18052. Please leave your donations inside the foyer on the right, Monday through Friday 9AM- 5PM, Saturday 9AM-1PM & Sunday 10AM-1PM. Note: We do appreciate donated food items. However, donated refrigerated, frozen, perishable or homemade items WILL NOT be accepted due to food safety liability reasons. OUR MISSION is to alleviate food insecurity in Whitehall and Coplay. I wanted to give you an overview of our current programs since we are not just a Food Pantry.
FOOD PANTRY – The Pantry serves low-income Whitehall and Coplay residents. Located at St. John the Baptist Church, 3024 S. Ruch St, Whitehall, our food distributions take place the 2nd Thursday of each month from 11am-1pm and 5:30-7pm. We currently provide outside “drop and go” bags to Whitehall and Coplay residents in the Church parking lot. ID is required (driver’s license or current utility bill). Income limits apply - you just tell us your yearly, monthly, or weekly gross income (before taxes) and sign a self-declaration government form. Please note that there is no smoking on church property. If you are in need of food but are not a Whitehall or Coplay resident or do not have transportation, please call 484-225-0358. We know there are many food insecure residents in Whitehall Township and Coplay Boro and we want to provide food to them. Please let your family, friends, and neighbors who live in these two areas know about us. We are here to help. Many do not have transportation. Can you bring them? We are providing shelf stable dry food like rice, pasta, Mac & Cheese, canned tuna and chicken, canned string beans & corn, cereal, pancake mix, peanut butter and jelly plus more items along with frozen meats, dairy items like butter & cheese, and fresh produce. We also provide a couple toiletries and have a small amount of baby food and dog & cat food. Food items are subject to change. Please go to https://tinyurl.com/WCHIPantryList to donate needed food items. These items can also be dropped or shipped to Shari Noctor at my Re/Max Unlimited office, 1080 Schadt Ave, Whitehall PA 18052 FREE COMMNITY MEALS - WCHI and the Faith-Based Community are proud to provide these FREE meals to low-income Whitehall-Coplay households twice a month through December 2022. The host location changes every time and they will decide if face masks are required. All are welcome to attend both meals on the 1st Sunday and 3rd Tuesday each month from 4:00-6:30pm. Meals are guaranteed for the first 100 guests. Each site location will state if this is an inside or outside “Drop and Go” pick up distribution or if it is a dine-in meal. We will post site requirements on Facebook for each meal. Go to tinyurl.com/WCHIprograms for updated meals.
Sunday, April 3; Tuesday, April 19; and Sunday, May 1 are to be determined. If any faith-based organization can do any of these dates, please contact Shari at 610-730-8067. Otherwise, we will not be able to offer a free meal on these days. BINGO - We are hosting two more Sunday bingos this spring. New location: St Peter Church, 4 South 5th St, Coplay March 13th and April 10th . Doors open at 1pm. Calling starts at 2pm. $15 entry fee buys you 2 bingo boards with four games. Each additional board is $1 each and a pack of 5 specials are $5. Bingo chips and dabbers are available for purchase. Masks are optional. Food is also available for purchase. Questions Contact Liz Rodgers 484-274-6687. SNACK PACK PALS- WCHI administers the Snack Pack Pal Program (SPP) with assistance from WCSD and St Elizabeth’s Regional School. The mission is to combat hunger for the most food -insecure students at both schools by providing a pack of kid-friendly, easy-to-prepare meals and snacks to supplement their nutrition over school holidays and long weekends. On average, WCHI provides 157 bags of shelf-stable food to WCSD and 10 bags to St Elizabeth’s monthly. VOLUNTEERS- We are 100% volunteer and WCHI could never do any of our programs without their selfless support and time. All volunteers must have state required criminal background checks since we work with children. For a full list of our requirements https://tinyurl.com/WCHIforms and to register https://tinyurl.com/WCHIvolunteer Questions, please Contact Sylvia [email protected] Thank you and have a great week. Happy March – Spring is on the way!! |
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