The Rotary Club of Dover recently presented a donation of over £3,000 to a local pantry in order to support the good work it has been doing for the community since last year.
The Dover Pantry is part of Your Local Pantry – a network of community food stores which aim to reduce food waste and help people save money on their food bills. Membership is open to the community surrounding the pantry address and local families are strongly encouraged to join.
Dover Rotary used the money they raised from their Christmas collections as well as from their JustGiving page and presented the Dover Pantry team with a cheque of £3716.05.
The team at Dover Pantry receiving their cheque from the Rotary Club of Dover.
While presenting the cheque, Dover Rotary President Ian Wright said to Sarah Horan and her team of volunteers: “Dover Pantry is a tremendous scheme providing a helping hand for local residents to access high quality food, fruit, vegetables and store cupboard favourites to the value of £15, £20 or more in return for a small weekly subscription fee of £5.
“It is a great service and one in which you should take great pride.”
This wasn’t the only big occasion this past month for Ian Wright and his club as Dover Rotary recently got to talk over Zoom with their American counterparts at the Rotary Club of Dover New Hampshire.
A screenshot of the meeting between the two Rotary clubs.
After a brief appreciation of Rotary Day, the two clubs used the meeting to discuss local projects they are involved with on both sides of the pond, which included a mention of the donation to Dover Pantry.
Rotarian John Glass from the UK’s Dover Rotary also got to describe the Shoebox Scheme where boxes filled with appropriate items for differing age groups are collected and taken to places of need in Eastern Europe such as Romania.
From the Dover NH club, President Jim Munro described similar activities that are aiming to help the club’s community, such as how the club are responding to the issue of homelessness in the area.
Munro described how the club organised the purchase of coats, hats, gloves and in particular woollen socks for protection against the cold New England winter, with flashlights also being provided.
The meeting enabled Rotarians from both clubs to have an appreciation of similar social problems and it is hoped the meeting has now provided the foundation for greater creativity between the two clubs.
