November 6, 2020

Click here to read this week’s email from Rev. Kate Shaner.

• November 3, Tuesday: 24
• November 4, Wednesday: 34
• November 5, Thursday: 23

We have new shifts available! Until Thanksgiving, we will still staff volunteers for extended hours as our clients adjust to the new hours. Tuesday and Thursday shifts will be split into two parts 8:30 am-11:00 am and 11:00 am-1:30 pm. After Thanksgiving, we will shorten those shifts! Remember to dress appropriately for outdoor work. Sign up online if you can volunteer this week.

Click here to be added to First Community prayer chain.

The Pop Up Pantry continues to serve clients by taking needed food directly to clients and their families in their local communities.  During October, food was distributed every Wednesday at the following agency sites:

• October 7:   Commons at Livingston-34 clients
• October 14:  Southpoint Apartments-37 clients
• October 21:  Commons at Grant-40 clients
• October 28:  Commons at Livingston-40 clients

Our number of clients and families served continued to increase in October:

•  October      151
•  September 144
•  August        123
•  July              98

Our Pop Up Pantry team continues to do an outstanding job of facilitating a safe working environment by bagging food outside, limiting our number of volunteers, maintaining physical distancing, masking, and hand hygiene.  We are fortunate to have the use of one of the church vans and a volunteer driver so that we can safely deliver our food to the designated site after bagging is completed. We’re thankful for the continued assistance of our Share and Learn Garden and for the support of H2H in providing fresh produce in addition to the dry food items served to our Pop Up Pantry clients. We’re also grateful to the Monday Meals for the Homeless team for sharing bread and dessert items for our clients.

With winter upon us and the rapid growth of COVID-19 infections, the food insecurity needs of families are continuing to increase along with health, safety, and economic concerns.  The Pop Up Pantry team is working to expand our outreach initiative to additional agencies within the Columbus community.  We continue to be blessed by the opportunity to serve others as God calls us to do.

We will be hosting a LIVE nativity on December 19 in the parking lot of First Community South! We are extending an exclusive invitation to the First Community staff and our Heart to Heart volunteers and their families to drive through the nativity from 2pm to 3pm. The nativity will remain open to everyone until 5pm. We will provide more information as it becomes available.

• We can no longer accept donations of used plastic grocery bags. Please do not bring them to the annex for donation.
• If you would like to volunteer for Heart to Heart, but remain at home due to the pandemic, please contact us. We have a few jobs that could be done from the safety and comfort of your home, on the phone.
• If you’re interested in helping us with our semi-regular monthly pickup from Penzey’s Spices, please contact us. We will put you in touch with their representative to make arrangements.
• Do you know an organization that could regularly supply us with a donation of goods distribution? Perhaps your friend manages a pet store and would like to donate dog food. We would love to make a connection! We are especially interested in pet food, toilet paper, and diapers. Please contact us to make arrangements.
• We are going to start logging incoming Direct Retail Pickups online. If you’re volunteering during the delivery of a donation from one of our retail partners, you may be asked to do record this. Help will be available on-site, and there will be printed instructions available. However, if you’re interested in learning how to use the program, please click through the slideshow below.

As part of our agreement with Mid-Ohio Food Collective, we must maintain certain standards. One of these is Civil Rights training for all of our volunteers. All volunteers will be required to complete this online training. There are three steps to this process.

1. Take the free online training course available here.
2. Complete the quiz at the end of the slideshow.
3. Use this online form to let us at Heart to Heart know you have completed your training, so we can verify with Mid-Ohio Food Collective. Please note you are not required to login as a First Community member to complete this step.

We are trying to streamline our communications at Heart to Heart. We want to make sure you’re getting all the information you want, and only the information you want. In order to better serve this goal, we have created and begun to use new email distribution lists. Please click below to sign up for the appropriate email list(s).

Dear Heart to Heart Volunteers,

We are grateful for your willingness to share your time at the Heart to Heart Food Pantry during this pandemic. The work we do is very important to the community and keeping it operational and safe are our utmost priorities at this time.

We want to remind you of the following:

Please do NOT come to volunteer at Heart to Heart if you have:

• symptoms of illness
• a fever or a cough
• been in contact with someone who has been ill or has a fever or cough
• have been in contact with someone who has tested positive COVID-19 in the last 30 days.

BEFORE you enter the church property (while you are still in your car), please do the following:

• Put on your face mask.
• Use hand sanitizer.

When on church property:

• Follow check-in procedures and take your temperature.
• Keep face mask on at all times.
• Observe social distancing.

If, at any time, you (or someone in your household) test positive for COVID-19, you must notify us immediately, as there are protocols and safety measures to complete if a person testing positive was on the property.

Thank you for all the work you do.