I hope everyone has been enjoying your summer! It has been a hot and humid one. I am happy when the rain comes to water our lawns, vegetables and flowers.
Please mark your calendars to attend our first 2021 WCHI public meeting next Tuesday, July 27th at 11 am in our Pantry, 3024 S Ruch St, Whitehall. You will learn more about our WCHI programs. At this meeting, I plan to schedule WCHI’s Free Community Meals to start in September 2021 through December 2022 with our Faith Based Community members and others who can host a meal. Please attend. We need your help and input. Our Children’s Summer Feeding Program (CSFP) continues every Monday and Wednesday 10-11am at our six locations for all low income Whitehall and Coplay children, a baby through age 18. Last week, WCHI fed 129 children and registered 9 new households. We want you to encourage more households to attend and receive a free bag of breakfast and lunch items that change all the time for each child in your household. We urge you to attend even though you have received the P-EBT stimulus money. This bag of food includes cereal, shelf stable milk, oatmeal packets, tuna fish, mac & cheese, etc and will last unopened for several months. Our distribution sites are located at: (1) Coplay location-Redeemed Christian Church of God, 5 N 3rd St; (5) Whitehall locations: Park and Church Streets in the Egypt Community Church social hall parking lot; 3rd & Leisenring Streets in Cementon at the school bus stop; St John’s Lutheran Church, 835 N 3rd St at the door in the alley with the ramp; Maryland Circle at the school bus stop; and Mickley Run Apartments in the west parking lot closest to the 350 building off of Overlook Rd. Please attend the site closest to your home. Thank you to Courtney Brinkley, Kristin Quirk, and Rebecca McAtee who brought United Way’s LV Reads program to both our Maryland Circle and Mickley Run Apartment Children Summer Feeding Program sites on July 14th. The children who attended that day received books, crayons, and a paper fan. Books will be distributed at our other four CSFP sites the next two weeks. And we will disburse books again to children at all six CSFP sites in August from book donations from United Way, the Whitehall Public Library, Cops & Kids, and the public. Reading over the summer is very important for school age children. WCHI Garden is growing several vegetables for our CSFP. Anne and Erik’s green thumbs provided over 100 pounds of zucchini, string beans, banana peppers and cucumbers for the children last week. Some of the zucchini were 18-20 inches long!! Thank you, Anne and Eric for maintaining and cultivating the garden in this heat and humidity. The children love receiving the vegetables!! To go with Anne and Erik’s cucumbers, Julie Davitt, our Board Director from Penn State provided this cucumber recipe from USDA MY Plate https://tinyurl.com/8nj8hvew Ingredients: 1 cucumber (large, peeled and thinly sliced), 2 tablespoons low-fat yogurt (Julie says you can use sour cream or mayonnaise), 1 tablespoon vinegar, 1 tablespoon vegetable oil, 1 tablespoon water, 1 teaspoon dill weed (optional), 1 dash pepper (optional). Directions: 1. Peel and thinly slice cucumber. 2. Mix all other ingredients in the mixing bowl. 3. Add cucumber slices and stir until coated. 4. Chill until serving. A heartfelt thank you again is extended to all our WCHI volunteers and our public food and monetary donors. We could not do any of our programs without you!!
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Thank you, Patty Vahey, Director, and the Whitehall Public Library staff for donating and packing bags of books and information about the library for each child attending our Children’s Summer Feeding Program (CSFP) on July 7th. We gave away additional books also donated from the library. The children were all excited to receive the books!! WCHI provided a “drop and go” bag of food to 68 children on July 5th and 71 children on July 7th. Michelle Khouri, WSCD Registrar, sent out a robocall, text, and email on Tuesday to the households receiving free and reduced rate breakfast and lunch in the District about our CSFP on Wednesday and our WCHI Pantry on Thursday. WCHI volunteers working our 6 CSFP sites also distributed a flier promoting our July 8th Pantry. Thank you to Michelle and to our wonderful WCHI volunteers. You have truly made a difference in so many residents’ lives. Many residents did not know about our Pantry. We had record numbers attend our Pantry distribution on Thursday!! Many showed us our fliers and others said the school contacted them. On July 8th, we served 88 Whitehall and 30 Coplay households which included 179 adults, 170 children, and 78 seniors. WCHI fed 427 people!! The next highest was on May 13th with 389 people. This was the most children we ever served, too. The next highest children served were 131 on April 8th. A big shout out THANK YOU goes out to our fabulous Children’s Summer Feeding Program and Pantry volunteers, who pack and disburse all of our “drop and go” bags. Pantry guests receive four bags of dry food, one bag of frozen meats and fish, one bag of dairy-butter and cheese, and one bag of toiletries when we have them; baby food and dog/cat food as needed. Please continue to tell you friends and neighbors about our Children’s Program and our Pantry. With Michelle’s robo calls, a few residents called me to tell me they work during the day and their children are not allowed to leave the house. If you know anyone that this is also an issue, please have them call me. I will make other arrangements for them to receive our bagged children’s food. It is important to me that you know about www.lvfreshfoodbucks.org My friend, Allison Czapp, is the Director of Lehigh Valley Buy Fresh Buy Local (BFBL). From the above referenced site: “Fresh Food Bucks gives people shopping with food stamps up to $10 per day to purchase fresh, local fruits and vegetables. Eat better while supporting local farmers! LV Fresh Food Bucks not only provides our low-income community members with the freshest, most nutritionally dense food available, it creates additional revenue channels for our local farmers and keeps more money circulating in our local economy. How it works: Take your EBT/ACCESS card to a participating location. Shop for SNAP eligible food items using your EBT/ACCESS card. BFBL will match what you spend with free LV Fresh Food Bucks to buy fresh and local produce – up to $10 a day! The two closest farmer’s market to Whitehall-Coplay is in Northampton Boro, Laubach Ave & Smith Lane, in the Municipal Park Complex across from the Northampton Municipal Admin Building, every Tuesday 3-6:30pm. Wild Fox Farm, Barto is the only vendor there that accepts the EBT/ACCESS card. The second closest vendor accepting this program is Hersch’s Market, 129 S 17th Street, Allentown, PA 18104 Open M-Sat 9-6:30 and Sun 9-5. Please call/text me with any questions on the above info. Have a great week!! For the five days in June that we offered our Children’s Summer Feeding Program, we provided a bag of food to 170 children. Our highest number of children served on one day was 115 on June 23rd. The children and parents attend when they can. These are the total number of children served by location for June: Cementon 9; Coplay 26; Egypt 9; Fullerton 29; Maryland Circle 42; and Mickley Run 55.
We have the capability of providing food to a minimum of 500 children, a baby through age 18, every Monday and Wednesday. Please spread the word to help us serve many more Whitehall and Coplay low income household children every Monday and Wednesday 10-11 am. Every day is a different bag of food. After the 4th day, the food bag items will repeat again. Our July 5th bag will contain a juice box, 1 can of chicken chili or beef stew, 2 small milk boxes, pancake mix, a nutrigrain bar, a 6 pack of raisins, and a small individual bag of cookies. Our July 7th bag includes 3 small milk boxes, peanut butter jar, a can of vegetable soup, a small box of mac and cheese, 1 applesauce can, snack chips and small sandwich style crackers. Bag food items may vary and they are available while supplies last at our 6 distribution sites. We provided zucchini and string beans fresh from our WCHI garden at the Mickley-Prydun Farm this week while the vegetable supply lasted to the children attending our Children’s Summer Feeding Program. The children’s faces lit up when they saw the fresh, green vegetables!! A variety of WCHI produce will be given out this summer as they become available. Also, on July 8th our WCHI Pantry is providing our monthly food distribution from 11am-1pm and 5:30-7 pm in the parking lot of St. John the Baptist Church, 2024 S Ruch St, Whitehall. Please expect long lines this week as we need to register everyone once again for Second Harvest and USDA’s new fiscal year which started on July 1st. Please see our new sign in front of the Christ the King School where our Pantry is located. Since we will have an abundance of zucchini from our garden this summer, we wanted to provide some ways to prepare this summer squash. Julie Davitt is a WCHI Board Director and a Nutrition Education Adviser (spelled with a E) at Penn State. She provided this video from USDA, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSKtPtW0X2o which shows adults and kids how to make corn and zucchini pancakes. Julie also provided these zucchini preparations from Katy Moscoso, Program Specialist with Iowa State University Extension and Outreach. “Zucchini is one of my favorite vegetables because of how versatile it is. You can use this inexpensive summer squash in several ways when cooking and baking. I didn’t appreciate zucchini as much as a child, but now that I do most of the cooking at my house, I love how easy it is to transform this veggie to meet everyone’s needs! Below are a few of my favorite ways to use this tasty green veggie. Sauté– I love to sauté diced or chopped zucchini in a little bit of olive oil with spices and other summer squash or tomatoes. It is a quick, tasty side dish that everyone enjoys! I also like using sautéed zucchini in recipes like Zucchini Hummus Wraps and Vegetable Quesadillas. Bake– I like to add shredded zucchini to meatloaf, muffins and cakes. One of my favorite muffin recipes is the Chocolate Chip and Zucchini Muffins from Spend Smart. Eat Smart. My family also likes to have sliced zucchini baked in the oven with parmesan cheese for a crunchy snack. Grill– Cut the zucchini in half lengthwise and cook it on the grill with a drizzle of olive oil and a blend of spices. I use leftover grilled zucchini in pasta and on grilled cheese sandwiches. Steam– If I want to have a lighter pasta, I make zucchini noodles with a cheap spiralizer I purchased several years ago at a home goods store. The noodles can be steamed and used as an alternative to heavy pasta dishes. When our daughter was a baby, I would steam zucchini to make baby food since it was inexpensive. One of my favorite things about using zucchini in a recipe or as a side dish is that zucchini does not take long to prepare or cook. I love how zucchini takes on the flavor of what you cook it with, making it easy to prepare in a variety of ways. Grab a zucchini next time you pick out produce- you won’t be disappointed!” I am very excited to report that WCHI’s Children’s Summer Feeding Program provided 115 children with a “drop and go” bag of food on June 23rd just 3 days into our new program!!! Our goal is to feed a minimum of 500 Whitehall and Coplay low income children (a baby through age 18) every Monday and Wednesday 10-11 am (including July 5th) through August 25th. We are on target to hit out goal in July. We have 6 locations – one in Coplay and 5 in Whitehall. Please come to the closest one to your home and tell your family, friends, and neighbors to come to one of our sites. We are here to help. Click here for more info and the locations.
Just a reminder, that our Pantry will be open next Thursday, July 8th in the parking lot of St John the Baptist Church, 3024 S Ruch St, Whitehall from 11:00-1pm and 5:30-7:00 pm. Please expects long lines. Since we are in July, we must re-register everyone who attends to update our records via USDA and Second Harvest rules. Their fiscal year runs July 1st- June 30th. Our Pantry serves low income Whitehall and Coplay residents. We provide food to many different types of households, including individuals, adults with or without children, and seniors. All are welcome. ID is required (valid driver’s license or utility bill). See our WCHI garden grow!! Please say hi to Anne and Erik when you are on the Ironton Rail Trail between Center and Lehigh Streets at the Mickley-Prydun Farm. WCHI has a lease with Whitehall Township for the garden and Erik and Anne are having so much fun planting and maintaining the vegetables. They are growing tomatoes, zucchini, peppers, cucumbers, and banana peppers for our Pantry and our Children’s Summer Feeding Program, while supplies last. WCHI is having our first public meeting since Covid shut us and everyone else down in March 2020. This will be on Tuesday July 27th at 11 am in our Pantry, 3024 S Ruch St, Whitehall. We hope to begin our Free Community Meals in September with our Faith Based Community members and others who can host a meal, which is guaranteed for the first 100 guests. Please mark your calendars and be part of our upcoming meeting. You will also learn more about WCHI. Our WCHI Bingos also will be starting on September 12th at Commitment to Family and Community, 165 Cherry Street, Coplay. Doors will open at 1 and bingo starts at 2. Please mark your calendars. More info will be provided as we get closer to the date. WCHI is 100% volunteers and all of us enjoy working with our Whitehall and Coplay residents and friends. You can volunteer too!! Click here and you can see our requirements. Also, please like us on Facebook and visit our website frequently for the latest news. I personally think the website looks fantastic!!! As always, I like to thank all our selfless volunteers and everyone who has helped WCHI assist our Whitehall and Coplay residents. This is not limited to but includes the Diocese of Allentown, everyone at St John the Baptist Church, all our Faith Based organizations members, Lehigh County and all the Commissioners who approved our two CARES grants, Second Harvest, everyone at WCSD, Whitehall and Coplay Libraries, Whitehall Township and Coplay Boro, and a myriad of many, many generous individuals and businesses who donate their time, talents, and treasures to further our Mission, which is “To alleviate food insecurity in Whitehall and Coplay.” Thank you all and have a great week!! WCHI will be providing a Children’s Summer Feeding Program for Whitehall and Coplay residents from a toddler through age 18 for the 10 weeks that school closes for the summer. We are currently working on 5-6 location sites throughout Whitehall and in Coplay.
Many children rely of the free and reduced breakfast and lunch provided at the Whitehall Coplay School District (WCSD). The food service department closes during the 10 week summer break. The current numbers from WCSD are that 4,242 children are enrolled in the district. More than half the children (55.6%) 2,359 children qualify for and receive free and reduced rate breakfast and lunch. Many of these children rely on this food. Unfortunately, when school closes, many children do go hungry. Your neighbor may be one of these children since childhood hunger is very real and very well hidden. This is not just a Whitehall-Coplay issue. Childhood hunger is nationwide. WCHI is committed to alleviating food insecurity to Whitehall and Coplay residents. Though we cannot feed every child, we hope to feed at least 500 children this summer. We are working with WCSD to verify, where we think many food insecure children live, are actually the correct locations. Though the district, cannot give me addresses, they can give me general areas. What was provided conforms to the USDA data I already have. Due to Covid, we will be doing drop and go distributions with dry food only. We do not have a facility to prepare sandwiches and do not want the liability of food safety with time and temperature for refrigerated items. A list of food items will be added to our website in April, but it would include items to make meals at home i.e. cereal w/ shelf stable milk, pancake mix, tuna, mac and cheese, ramen noodles (bricks), fruit cups, etc. A prepacked bag of food will be provided for each child. Some baby food may be available. We will bring the food to the locations, which will be announced in a future article. A parent or caregiver also can pick the food up for the household. We will be registering our guests by household just like we do for our Pantry distribution. I want to emphasize and encourage our guests, that even with Covid stimulus and EBT money for food, PLEASE still come to both this summer program and to our Food Pantry the 2nd Thursday of the month 11am -1pm and 5:30-7 pm. Most of our food is dry, shelf stable food that will last well after the stimulus and EBT monies are gone. We want you to come and take advantage of the food we offer. WCHI is here to help you and your family. We cannot run this summer program or any of our programs without volunteers. We have a fabulous volunteer data base and always can use more people to help with our various programs. Though nothing is finalized, we are discussing doing the summer food distribution twice a week – On Monday and Wednesday mornings at the various locations from 10-10:30 or 10-11 depending on number of children attending at the different sites. We are hopeful to have at least 4-6 volunteers working as a team. A volunteer does not have to commit to the whole summer or every week, but each site will need to have 4-6 people to work the site and will be coordinated well ahead of time. We have a fabulous volunteer software program and a great coordinator, Amy Sommers, who handles multiple sites and times. Child abuse clearances are required for all WCHI programs and can be found at https://tinyurl.com/WCHIvolunteer and https://tinyurl.com/WCHIforms We are also considering providing books to the children attending this summer program. Children, who do not read over the summer, fall behind almost 2 grades when they go back to school in the fall. This is called the Summer Slide. Though we are not providing programming, many people have softly used children’s books that they want to donate to us including the Whitehall Library and the general public. I’ll provide more information on this and all above in April. I am having an in person public meeting on this Summer Feeding Program at our WCHI Pantry, 3024 S Ruch St, Whitehall on April 6th at 11 am. Covid rules do apply. You must be feeling well and have not been recently exposed to someone with Covid. You must wear a facemask and we will be social distancing. Please contact me with any questions you may have. |