The Ripple Effect: Lindsay Brachle & nOURish BRIDGEPORT
“Do you have any jelly?”
After last month’s nOURish BRIDGEPORT volunteer morning, Impact FFC member Lindsay Brachle couldn’t get that question out of her head. And she knew she had to do something about it.
While packing food bags that day a nOURish Volunteer Coordinator shared how it’s relatively easy to source donations of peanut butter, but jelly is rare. And the first question parents who come to the food bank ask is, “…do you have any jelly?,” because their kids, like so many kids, just want to take a PB&J sandwich to school.
Leaving nOURish that morning, with that gut-wrenching question ringing in her head, Lindsay knew she had to take action. She reached out to nOURish for their food “wish list” and set up a meeting with the director of her daughter’s preschool – where PB&Js were aplenty. After hearing how the items would go to support children in the area who were the same age as those at the school, the director agreed to host a food drive and an email went out to the school community within twenty-four hours.
Collectively, the Westport preschool’s eighty families collected:
77 jars of jelly
474 granola / cereal bars (41 boxes)
45 boxes of cereal
22 bottles of canola oil
Countless bags of almonds, dried fruits, and shelf stable milk!
On donation day Lindsay and her daughter loaded up the car and headed to nOURish. As they unloaded the boxes, they got to meet some of the people picking up food that afternoon.
Lindsay shared, “It was awesome to connect with them and see on a personal level where our donations are going. I found myself thinking how pooling jelly and cereal bars across 80 families added up to a much bigger impact than I could have had on my own…much like the platform of Impact!” Lindsay has been a member of Impact for 2 years and first learned of nOURish at last year’s annual meeting.