The Sudbury Community Food Pantry celebrated its 26th anniversary in 2016. The 93 volunteers, contributed 6,351 hours serving our clients. Their commitment and dedication has enabled us to aid people who are struggling financially by providing them with food and personal care items that promote healthy living and doing so in a manner that preserves their dignity. I have heard on numerous occasions from my peers in other towns that clients of their pantry have described the Sudbury food pantry as a place with a friendly and welcoming environment.

From coordinating the volunteers, monitoring the pantry answering machine, stocking the shelves, picking from: donation boxes at Sudbury Farms and Shaw’s, purchases from The Greater Boston Food Bank and delivering them to the pantry, distributing the food, registering the clients, stocking the shelves, processing the food collected in the various food drives and deliveries from the GBFB, our volunteers have enabled The Sudbury Community Food Pantry to become an exceptional organization.

2016 was not a year without its challenges. We scrambled to get enough turkeys for Thanksgiving as the after effects of 20 million turkeys being euthanized because of the avian flu in 2015, meant there were fewer eggs laid. We were however able to obtain 112 Turkeys and 60 large roasting chickens.

There are definite signs of the economy improving and stabilizing as the number of clients we served was down 13.9% from 2014 and up 2.2% from 2015 and client visits down 11.8% from 2014 and down 1% from 2015. We added 370 new clients in 2016 while 351 clients no longer needed our services. This is consistent with the drop in unemployment numbers and the jobs report.

You can download the complete report here: The Sudbury Community Food Pantry 2016 A Year In Review