Kol hakavod to the many PSJC households who participated in our DIY Martin Luther King Jr. Day of Service this year. Despite COVID restrictions and bone-chilling cold, there was an amazing turnout!
We distributed 35-40 packs to members to make individual split pea or lentil soup kits, and you brought back about 520 soup kits. Since each kit yields about 4 servings, that means that we created the fixings for over 2000 separate bowls of hot soup! We were delighted to partner this year with Camp Friendship, a wonderful community resource on 8th Street and 6th Avenue in Park Slope with a food pantry that distributes produce, pantry items, and prepared meals weekly. Just this past weekend, our delicious soup kits went into 55 delivery bags that go to housebound older adults with disabilities, who like to cook for themselves. Camp Friendship was also planning to put out the remaining kits for the 200 folks who come to their food pantry on Saturdays, with any leftovers to go to another organization that also helps feed those in need.
Additionally, many of you wrote impassioned letters to your senators and representatives in support of refugee rights, for our long-time MLK Day of Service partner HIAS, which assists and advocates on behalf of refugees and asylum seekers . Thanks to all who mailed off your own letters, as well as to those who dropped their letters off at PSJC; they were sent off in a hefty batch to the relevant elected officials.
Thanks also to the stalwart folks at PAI who have been working in conjunction with this Day of Service to knit and crochet rectangles that will be sewn together into blankets for people in need, people living in homelessness, and children or babies in hospitals.
Despite this year’s challenges, we still came together to help others, and we look forward to going back to our highly effective (if slightly chaotic) onsite operation as soon as we can do that again. Meanwhile, look for further opportunities to gather and do good together even before next January – there may be more soup kits in our future!
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