YPATT, located at Trinity United Methodist Church, focuses on helping families and individuals with groceries once a month.
Emerging from the holidays and preparing for a new year, I thought it important to point to an organization in our community that focuses on helping others year-round. Kristen Skrobanek founded Your Place at the Table in 2012. I’m proud to have Skrobanek’s words fill the Mayor’s Message space this week:
The holidays are a time of planning great feasts or winter vacations, but some families are just trying to figure out where their next meal will come from. Where do these families go to get food for their children? Some help exists in areas such as Camden, but the need is everywhere. What about in Mullica Hill? Our community has a resource through Your Place at the Table, located at Trinity United Methodist Church. YPATT focuses on helping families and individuals with groceries once a month. Though most of the families have a working adult in their household, they may not earn enough to make ends meet. That’s where YPPAT comes in, and for the past five years this outreach would not have been possible without the support of our community. At YPATT, we stock our shelves through the generous donations we receive from school food drives, swim clubs, various scouting groups, soccer teams, In Between Girls, the Witches of East Greenwich, local farms, Century Savings Bank, Trinity Mullica Hill’s congregation and the Quaker Meeting House.
At Thanksgiving and Christmas, the Cake Boutique and Harrison House Diner provide the families with fresh baked pies to go along with their holiday meals. Rotary of Mullica Hill volunteers their time and support in multiple ways, including keeping the electricity on for a family that was about to have it shut off.
Since January 2017, we have doubled the families that we are serving, as well as the community support through financial donations, volunteer service hours and community food drives. We have created new partnerships with Harrison Township Committee, Mullica Hill Rotary, Mullica Hill Woman’s Club and more local churches. The money that has been donated via the famous Harrison House donation jar has provided the means to give the families a “dairy voucher” that can be used for them to purchase milk, butter and eggs. We even had more than 600 pounds of food donated from a local family’s Christmas party where the guests each brought a food donation. What a difference they made for us!
How can you help? Food drives provide the greatest assistance by keeping our shelves stocked for those in need. There are more than 200 families who are eligible for food; yet reaching them is only possible when we have the food items to distribute. You can make a difference with a single box of cereal. Feel free to contact us at (609) 202–0015, or visit us on the web: www.ypatt.org
We live in a great community that wants to help others during difficult times. Thank you for caring and wanting to make others’ lives a little better!
