August 17, 2022 Breakfast Meeting Notes

 

Denise won the 50/50 and donated it back to the club.

Tony won the opportunity to draw a card but he forfeited his chance to draw by dropping the deck on the floor! Funds raised this week will carry over to next week. Tony also presented his famous NH trivia

.

Denise had a happy dollar: her son was back home visiting for the first time in 2 ½ years!

 

Our speaker today was Eileen Muconis of the New Hampshire Food Bank. The organization is a partnership between Catholic Charities and Feeding America. They have 400 in-state partners to help with food distribution. Local agencies can place an order 4 days ahead of time and then pick up their order at one of four Manchester warehouses.

 

 In addition to food distribution, the Food Bank has many programs, such as the “cooking matters” sessions which teach people how to cook and shop on a budget. They sponsor incentive programs with local farmers’ markets and groceries which allow shoppers to buy two dollars’ worth of food for one dollar; this benefits both the buyer and the seller. They have a demo garden that grew 10,000 pounds of food last year. Their production kitchen makes 5,000-10,000 meals a week. The Food Bank also sponsors an 8 week culinary job training program to prepare food.

 

Their New Hampshire Feeding New Hampshire program provides grants to their 400 partner agencies so that they can buy direct from farmers. This year’s grant is $900,000. This also allows them to do bulk buying at the end of the season. The Food Bank distributes about 17 million pounds of food a year and COVID has only worsened the problem of food insecurity.

 

The upcoming fundraisers for the Food Bank include a golf classic in Manchester on September 12, a screening of the film Farm Free or Die at their office in September, a 5K run in September, and celebrity chef contest march 20^th or 27^th next year.

 

Announcements: Board meeting this Friday on Zoom (7 am), with club forum next week.

Mike announced that the backpack project is coming along. We will try to meet at he the Whole Village Family Services on Highland Street to fill backpacks this Friday afternoon at 1 pm.

 

Jenny Bentwood was in attendance and noted that COVID is still a problem. There are a lot of cases, although many of them aren’t as severe, and so they continue to have staff shortages as people test positive. The antivirals help, but they give best results if used in the first 3 days of illness. In addition, Paxlovid has the potential for serious drug interactions, so they are restricting its use to those patients at highest risk.