Thank you!

Promising to feed 29 kids every weekend can make us a little  nervous.  Throw an extra day in there, and that's an additional 87 meals to come up with.  Two extra days in one month?  Seems a bit overwhelming!  But we had yet another reminder this week of why, when we put our faith in God and in this community, we have no reason to worry.  Everyone responded so generously to the needs we posted, and we have enough for the next two extended weekends! It's been awesome to see how our prayers have been answered over the last two days. The food deliveries, financial support, and phone calls pledging more support were so amazing and yet another reminder of how blessed we are to be a part of this community. Thanks so much! God bless you!

Week of Oct 15-LOTS of need!!

Hello and thank you all for checking in!

As you all know, Helping Hands has been providing food for Crystal City children for about a year.  Our goal is to ensure that these kids have enough to eat over the weekend while they are away from school.  So far, we have been BLESSED by this community with an abundance of donations!  Every time we ask, you provide.  We operate with no budget, only with faith that the people of our community will help, and you always do! 

We are really low on donations for the upcoming week.  We have a lot of snacks, but hardly anything that could be considered a meal.  Following are the items we need for this week:

Beefaroni
Spaghetti O's
Soup
Stew
Mac and Cheese
Chili
Tuna or Canned Chicken
15 full size boxes of cereal

Since it's a 3 day weekend, we would like to send them home with enough to last all 3 days.  While you are grocery shopping this weekend, please pick up a couple of extra items for Helping Hands!  Donations can be dropped off at Crystal City Elementary by Wednesday at 3pm.  Monetary donations can also be dropped off at the school.

Thanks so much for everything, and we will update you on the status of donations as the week goes on!  Have a great weekend!

Week of October 8

Hi! Thanks so much for all of the donations that came in for this week's bags. All 29 kids were sent home with full bags for the weekend AND full sized jars of peanut butter and jelly. Awesome! We had several extras, and only need a few more items by Wednesday for next week's bags:
  21 Macaroni and Cheese 
6 Soup 
15 cans of tuna or chicken

In addition to the weekend bags, we send home full sized jars of peanut butter and (plastic squeezable) jelly the first week of every month. October is taken care of, and we would like to be proactive in looking to November. We still need:
 15 peanut butter 
 15 jelly
20 sleeves of crackers
 to send home enough for all the kids in November. Thanks so much for all that you do! Each week we are blessed with the opportunity to provide for these kids, and we are so thankful that you have joined us in making sure none of our kids go hungry.

If you would like to donate and can't make it to the school during normal school hours, you can drop them off at Grace Presbyterian Church and we will bring them to the school.  Thanks so much and have a blessed week!

Items needed!

Hi! Thanks so much for checking in with us! We're a little over a month into the school year and have been blessed with the ability to take care of 26 kids each weekend. As you know, we strive to provide these kids with meals and snacks that are easy to prepare and don't require additional ingredients. We had such an outpouring of support over the summer and at the beginning of the year, we haven't had an updated list of our needs-they were all met without even asking!! That brings us to today...we have all of our bags packed for this week, however as we were packing the bags we took note of some really important items that we are very low on or out of, and we need these before we pack bags next week. If you can throw a few of these items in with your weekly shopping trip, it would be so helpful! Here's a list:
  Beefaroni 
Canned tuna or chicken 
Pop Tarts
 Soup
 Oatmeal 
Squeezable bottles of jelly (no glass, please!)

If you would like to donate, please bring your items to the Crystal City Elementary school office during school hours. You can also drop your donations off at Grace Presbyterian Church and we will collect them and take them to the school.

September 2012

Thanks so much for checking in with Helping Hands!  Over the last few weeks, we have been so blessed with donations, and we are once again reminded of how fortunate we are to live in a community that cares so much about their neighbors. 

Helping Hands is committed to ensuring that no child in our school is at risk of going hungry over the weekend.  We currently have 25 children enrolled in Helping Hands. These children will receive meals and snacks every Friday to ensure that they have all they need and are nourished and ready to learn during the school week. 

We have enough to take care of these kids over the next few weeks-thank you! If you have made Helping Hands a part of your weekly shopping trips and would like to drop some things off, we will gladly keep them and make sure they go directly to Crystal City children in need.  Meals and snacks that are easy to prepare and kid-friendly are greatly appreciated!  Please continue to check in with this blog or on our Helping Hands Crystal City facebook page.  It's not uncommon for us to run out of specific items, and these two sites are great places for us to communicate those needs to you!

Have a great week!

Welcome Back!

We hope everyone had an amazing summer and are ready to kick off the school year! With the start of school right around the corner, we thought it would be a good time for an update on Helping Hands. We organized and inventoried all of our donations last week and thanks to the generosity of so many in our community, we are off to a great start to the 2012-2013 school year!  We don't have exact numbers of how many children we will be serving this year, however we are confident that 

we have enough to get through the first few weeks of school. We will continue to update this blog and our Facebook page with the needs of the program each week. Please feel free to share this page with anyone who you think might be interested in helping out! Whether you make Helping Hands a part of your weekly shopping trip or donate once in a while, every single donation counts and goes directly to kids right here in our community. Thanks so much!

We are all set for summer! Yay!

We had a great day for donations! Thanks so much to Andrew Black and MetLife for holding a food drive for Helping Hands! We now have enough to take care of all of our kids over summer school. We even have enough to start the school year in August! Thanks so much for all of your support and donations over the last several months. It's been such a blessing to see how much the people of Crystal City are willing to give! Have a great summer, and keep our Helping Hands kids in your prayers!