Change is in the Air
On behalf of the HANDS Board, I wanted to let you know that we will not be offering the Holiday Dinner this year.
For over 20 years, Age Well, Burlington School Food Project, Michelle Charron, Elks Lodge, HANDS, Penny Cluse Café, Temple Sinai, and hundreds of volunteers, organizations, and businesses have partnered to offer a hot, healthy meal and a giftbag to seniors all over Chittenden County.
Two families, Doug Davis’s and Mitzy Foy’s, have come in on Christmas Day for most of those years to donate their time to make much of our holiday meal. Doug, the Food Service Director at Burlington School Food Project, retired on June 30….a very well-deserved break after a long and fulfilling career getting food to so many in our community. And Charles Reeves, co-owner of Penny Cluse Café, wants to dial back their role a bit as well, after many years of helping out with lasagna and so much more.
With those two critical pieces of the holiday meal no longer available to us, the HANDS Board met to discuss our options. After a long meeting with many ideas shared, the Board decided to take a hiatus this year to review the program. It feels both sad and hopeful at the same time---sad that we won’t be organizing this lovely event and hopeful that someone else in the community will step in to take over.
In the past 20 years, we have grown from 20 dinners that first year to 1,000 meals in 2020. That’s both heartwarming and astonishing! We should all be very proud of the gap we’ve filled, the seniors who have loved and appreciated the meal and giftbag, the incredible team that has worked well together, and the creation of a remarkable community program.
To everyone who has helped in any way, we are so very grateful to you for your years of lending a hand! Thank you from the bottom of our hearts for your personal commitment to making the holiday season filled with a bit more magic for seniors. And very special thanks to our “A Team” that included Doug Davis, Mitzy Foy, Tina & Tim Gibbo, Jess Hyman, Mark Larson, Amy Livingston, Chris Moldovan, Tim Palmer, Charles Reeves, Linda Retchin, Jeff Solomon, and Mara Welton. They’re all incredible angels.
The sitdown dinner, which has happened in the past at the Elks Lodge, will not be taking place either. If/when we hear of another effort to get meals delivered to seniors or a sitdown meal this year, we will certainly let you know.
Please be assured that anyone who gets Meals on Wheels through Age Well will receive an additional meal prior to the actual holiday. Others who have received the Holiday Dinner would not necessarily be on that list, but we will do our very best to contact those seniors ahead of time so that they can make alternative plans.
We’d still like to offer some nourishment and joy to older Vermonters this holiday season. Please join our new “Season’s Eatings” initiative! We’ll bring volunteers together to create personalized cards, and then send the cards to seniors…along with a grocery store giftcard to help with food security over the holiday season. But, we’ll need YOUR help to make this happen. To make a donation, please click here: https://www.handsvt.org/holiday-dinner Thank you very much!
If you have cheery, non-denominational holiday cards to donate, or would like to be added to the volunteer list for the card-making sessions, please contact Jess Hyman at jessicahymanvt@gmail.com.
Thank you, always, for helping us get food to older adults. I am so grateful.
Megan