A Brooklyn NY food pantry called on Greenway Products and Services for help to keep community members fed and safe. The Oneg Shabbos Kosher Pantry reached out to Greenway Products and Services for help in setting up a new, safer way to provide food staples to neighbors facing severe food insecurities, exacerbated by sudden unemployment across much of the area. The food pantry extended a mitzvah, or blessing, to Greenway by enlisting the pallet manufacturer to join the pantry on the front lines of fighting poverty that exists in our time.
Dominick Davi, Greenway’s president, quickly responded: “Our company always strives to be more than a company that sells pallets. Greenway is committed to help our communities get through with his pandemic in any way we can. Oneg Shabbos is a wonderful and caring organization. We are honored to donate pallets to them to make sure New Yorkers are ok.”
Dominick invites organizations taking extraordinary steps in response to the pandemic: “Greenway would like to know about your work, and our company would love to donate pallets, where they can be used to help.”
The food pantry is responding to an upsurge in demand in their New York community overwhelmed with the Coronavirus virus infections and growing numbers of dying community members. Facing this huge humanitarian need in its own backyard, Oneg Shabbos Kosher Pantry is looking for new sources of help as it deals with unprecedented challenges:
- Sudden, unexpected unemployment among families that live from pay check to pay check
- Social distancing requiring volunteers and food recipients to maintain 6 feet distance
- Volunteer working longer hours at greater personal risk
With Greenway’s donation of 200 food-grade wooden pallets, Oneg Shabbos can now prepare 200 pallets of food daily, six days a week for food distribution. On a weekly basis, Oneg Shabbos provides perishable fruits, vegetables and chickens, and packaged goods to 1,200 families. The pallets are stacked with food supplies in an outdoor area at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, where families can pick up a pallet full of food each, keeping safe distances from other clients and and volunteers. With this newly instituted pallet delivery method, human contact is minimized to avoid contamination risks.
Rabbi Shaul Shimon Deutsch, the director of Oneg Shabbos began the food pantry twenty-five years ago. The food pantry now feeds 1,200 families each week during the largest health and financial crisis the community has ever faced. The pantry feeds more than 18,000 grateful families a month. One of pantry’s clients, who recently succumbed from the Covid-19 virus, in his last dying breath, instructed his son: “Tell Rabbi Deutsch to please make sure to continue to feed my family.”
To feed the growing demand, some among the 260 volunteers are putting in exhausting 20-hour days, processing and distributing $6.5 million of food supplies each year. Food comes from manufacturers who donate overstocks and short-dated goods as well as national companies such as Pepsi (NASDAQ: PEP), Beechnut and Manischewitz.
One long-term volunteer recalls his initial doubts about the extent of hunger amongst fellow New Yorkers. When bringing a box of food to a family on one of his initial deliveries, the door was answered by young 6 and 7-year-old brothers. These two boys were so excited to see the food, they began to dance around the box. “I never saw anyone get so excited to get something so basic,” he recalls.
Dominick Davi, president of Greenway Products and Services, calls on the larger business community to join his company in helping communities at this crucial time. Greenway and its employees are doing what they can to help. He invites his business colleagues to stand up and join together to help families facing the biggest challenge of our time.
Oneg Shabbos is a New York state recognized food pantry affiliated with social service agencies like the United Way, Food Bank for NYC, City Harvest, Hpnap, Efap and Met Council, and partners with local food distributors and national manufacturers who donate goods. Food is distributed at the Brooklyn Navy Yard.
Greenway Products & Services, LLC is the largest pallet remanufacturers and recyclers in the New Jersey/New York metropolitan area. Greenway is a full-service pallet management company. We also accept scrap wood and landscaping debris from our customers that we turn into valuable resources. Contact us for a quote today. Visit our website, greenwaypsllc.com or call us at 732-442-0200. We can deliver trailers to you on a moment’s notice throughout the Mid-Eastern area.
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