The Village of Great Neck Plaza is teaming up with Long Island Cares Harry Chapin Food Bank for the third straight year to help run the village food drive. The food drive started on May 1 and is running through May 24. Cardboard boxes for these donations are available at Village Hall, 2 Gussack Plaza, during normal business hours.
“Donations are coming in daily from residents who are opening their heart to donate to this special cause,” Village of Great Neck Plaza mayor’s Assistant Brian Hetey said in an e-mail.
The village is looking for canned and packaged food as well as school supplies, pet food and health and personal care items such as baby products, toys, and shampoo. “The more items we can collect is a direct correlation to the number of people we can help; we will not turn down any unopened food items,” Hetey said.
“There’s a misperception about hunger on Long Island; it is a major issue here,” said Hetey.
Long Island Care estimates that almost 320,000 people on Long Island, including 110,000 children, often go hungry each day because they have no way to acquire a meal.
“What makes matters more pressing,” said Hetey, “is that it is often society’s most vulnerable who are affected by hunger; seniors living on a fixed income and children.”
Organizations like Long Island Cares help combat hunger with their vast amount of volunteers.
“They drop off and pick up the collection bins from the donations we seek for this cause,” said Hetey.
He said Long Island Cares immediately gives away the donated food items to over 600 Nassau and Suffolk County not-for-profit organizations in order to get the donated food items where they’re needed most. All the donated items collected goes toward helping the needy.
In addition to the village’s food drives, during Hurricane Sandy, the village worked with St. Rose of Lima Parish in Massapequa and St. Aloysius Church in Great Neck to collect food items, clothing, toys, baby products, and anything else that helped those affected most from Sandy. “The response we saw from Great Neckers who wanted to donate items was truly astonishing,” he said.
At the same food drive last year the village collected three full two feet by four feet boxes filled with various food items, mostly canned goods.
“This year, we are hoping to match those numbers. We already have one box filled, and we are hoping in the final two weeks of the drive, we will see an increase in the number of items to finish strong,” added Hetey.
