| Carole opened the meeting at 7:10 pm
by reading the prayer that will be placed in the Thanksgiving baskets. The minutes were read by Barbara Yannaco, accepted by Kay Coyle, and seconded by Betty Riggio. In attendance were: Betty Riggio, Fran Chesley, John Lucid, Yvonne Alexander, Janet Kenny, Maritza Norton, Linda Hunt, Joanne and Chuck Bunnell, JoAnn DiSalvo, Nick Dono, Ed Ryan, Dianne Ryan, Kay Coyle, Ray Reilly, Bill and Carole Grafer, and Barbara Yannaco. Our HPNAP report for October: we served 111 households which included 200 children, 187 adults, and 17 elderly. This represents a 48% increase over October 2007. Carole will be speaking with our financial advisor to be certain that we continue to handle our finances in the best way possible during these tough economic times. A vote was taken and approval was given for the Saint Vincent de Paul finance committee to make any changes they deemed necessary for our financial stability. Carole has signed all the necessary papers for the Stop and Shop Food for Friends program. We should be receiving a check from them in January. Although Good Counsel in Poughkeepsie has closed they are still supporting the women who have gotten apartments locally. We will continue to help them with baby food and other baby items whenever we can. We will be handing out about 133 baskets for Thanksgiving. We would like to thank everyone who donated a basket for their help. A special thank you to The Ark and the Dove school for their donation of 11 baskets and to the Blessed Kateri 8th grade Faith Formation class for their donation of 4 baskets. . |
Nick
and Chuck went to the food bank on November 10th and returned with
3,712 pounds of food which cost us $3360.54. Ed, Bucky, Laura, Kay,
Ann, Betty, Tom, Linda, Ralph, and Carole were all at the food closet
to help put this away. We would like to thank Cub Scout Pack 182 and St. Denis Church who both held food drives for us. We would also like to thank the parishioners of St. Columba who donated over $7900 in the special collection held for us in November. The following organizations will be holding food drives for us in the next few weeks: St. Columba religious education, East Fishkill PBA, Curves, and the East Fishkill Library which will be participating in the “food fight” between libraries. It would be helpful if we bring in our old egg cartons. Hickory Pond Farms is very generous in donating the eggs but the cartons become quite expensive. If you can help us out with this it would be appreciated. Carole handed out the meeting schedules for 2009. As you can see by our HPNAP numbers our client numbers are increasing. Some of our volunteers are being stretched to the limit. Carole is going to put a note in the bulletin of each parish to see if we can get more volunteers. If you know anyone who may be interested please ask them. Our next meeting will be December 10th. We will have a short social following the meeting. Carole closed the meeting at 8:30 pm with a prayer Submitted by Barbara Yannaco |