This month, the HudCo community came together in a big way to help our neighbors during the holiday season. Each week we concentrated our efforts toward assisting a different organization, as there are more people in need this year more than ever.
Coming off Thanksgiving weekend and into the first week of December, we supported the Dobbs Ferry for Social Justice Food Drive to help replenish the shelves of the Dobbs Ferry Food Pantry. HudCo members and friends donated bags upon bags of non-perishables, diapers, and face masks to help the Food Pantry prepare for the holiday rush.
At the end of the work week, we delivered 10 full Fresh Direct bags to South Presbyterian Church, home of the DF Food Pantry.
During the first half of December, Hastings-on-Hudson’s Family-to-Family organization put out a call for donations of gift cards so that families in need could provide holiday gifts for their children. So for the second week of our Do Good initiative, we raised money to go toward this Gift Card Drive for Family-to-Family.
HudCo Concierge Samantha Barr put together some beautiful seasonal arrangements, which were then sold to purchase gift cards from Amazon, Target, and TJ Maxx. Between the flower sales and gift card drop-offs, Family-to-Family received $520 in gift cards for local families.
SPRING Community Partners traditionally holds a coat drive each winter at Springhurst Elementary School to make sure all the families in Dobbs Ferry are able to stay warm. However, with the pandemic limitations, they didn’t have a place to do the collection.
One thing HudCo has a-plenty: space. So for the third week of December, we offered up our space to SPRING. And our community came through in a big way—all 63 coats (for men, women, and children) that SPRING asked for were brought in. And to top it off, our friends at Haute Hamper volunteered their services to ensure the coats were cleaned properly and ready to hand off to their new homes.
With the travel and visitation restrictions due to Covid, the most vulnerable of our neighbors are stuck at home, and many are unable to see family and friends. The Dobbs Ferry Senior Citizen Program planned a delivery of holiday meals and small gifts for over 60 residents who are home-bound this holiday season, and the HudCo community pitched in to make the dropoff even more special.
Thanks to the generous donations of our members and friends, we created gift packages containing fresh-baked cookies from First Village Coffee, tea, lip balm, and a seasonal arrangement hand-crafted by our very own floral genius Samantha Barr.
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The generosity and love demonstrated by our members and community over the last four weeks proves something that was core to the creation of HudCo nearly two years ago—that we are stronger when we work together.
Not only do we hope to safely work together physically in the HudCo space in a bigger way, but we will continue to focus our energy toward helping others and doing good. Each month of 2021 we will target a different organization that could use our resources, beginning in January when we’ll be doing work to help The Children’s Village. Stay tuned to find out how to get involved.