Location: Cornerstone Foundation Soup Kitchen, South Park Inn, Saint Elizabeth House & Friendship Center, Bernard Park, Bushnell Park
For this month’s Park event: we were excited to have our regular care packages with included: soap, toothbrush, toothpaste, face mask, floss picks, ear swabs, and shampoo. As an addition, we had shavers courtesy of the Lions club of Simsbury. With their help, we were also able to make small care packages with sanitary pads and an assortment of makeup for any ladies we meet. In addition this month each bag came with an assortment of candies and handwritten notes and quotes to inspire those who received our care packages.
Day Before the Event:
On Friday we had an eventful day in collecting all of our donations. We had a few curve balls to work around but we are starting to realize if we don’t work around curve balls then we wouldn’t learn how to build up our business better. Ashlei, I (Katie), and Abigail went out to Dunkin at around 8:30 p.m. to collect the sweets donations for the event Saturday morning. When we arrived at Dunkin, we noticed that there weren’t too many sweets left, but by the time we finished packing everything up, we were glad we had 3 trays for each shelter and 2 trays of munchkins for the park event. That was a total of 215 donuts and other treats for the shelter and 57 bundles of munchkins for our park event.
Day of the Event:
For Saturday we were happy that we again had Shayla joining us as a volunteer. On this particular morning, we had to adjust as due to work schedules two of us were working overnight, and prepping for this event was starting at 9 a.m. Nevertheless, we got the car loaded up and then headed out to the Cornerstone Foundation Soup Kitchen while Abigail and Shayla headed towards the park. Once Ashlei and myself met up with them, we set up our table and started handing out care packages.
We arrived at Bernard Park and it was a beautiful day with clear blue skies, and a little cool breeze but it started snowing, or so we all thought. There was a construction site that was blowing styrofoam around but we called it “snow” as we didn’t notice right away what was causing the white flurries. After about an hour we decided to head over to Bushnell Park as it was suggested we might be able to find others there as it was a quiet day in Bernard Park. On the way, we did a stopover at South Park inn and St. Elizabeth’s House and Friendship Center and dropped off 3 containers of goodies at each place.
Once we got to Bushnell Park we could hear drums coming from the top of the hill so we decided to walk around and see what it was all about. Bringing care packages with us, we headed on our way. The road by Bushnell park was blocked off but we saw why. We were able to see the “Black Lives Matter” painted on the road and it was absolutely beautiful and we noticed this is why that section was blocked off to cars. Each letter was done by a different Graffiti Artist. When we got up to the top of the hill by the capitol building we saw someone walk over with a protest sign. Although we couldn’t get closer we also saw further down the hill on Bushnell park some military training as well and people just enjoying themselves and the fresh air. Even though we didn’t get to hand out any more care packages it was nice to have team bonding with everyone and to talk about more upcoming plans for us.
Our Next event is next Saturday 03/20/21. Enjoy your week.
Remember Stay Safe! Stay H.O.P.E.F.U.L!
