The Greater Boston Food Bank is teaming up with the Red Sox for a two night fundraiser. Come to Fenway Park on July 25 or 26 at 7:05 and enjoy a game versus the Atlanta Braves while donating to the Greater Boston Food Bank, fighting food insecurity in our region. Contact Carlen Singmaster at csingmaster@gbfb.org for more information.
Volunteers at The Greater Boston Food Bank play a critical role in helping to end hunger in Eastern Massachusetts, and their role is even more critical now given the COVID-19 crisis. Our group and Families for Impact volunteering opportunities are temporarily suspended due to the COVID-19 crisis and public health recommendations related to large gatherings of people. Please check back each week for information about these programs. Volunteer shifts will be limited to groups of 10 individuals, and all volunteers will be provided with disposable gloves. Shift and sign up information are available at www.gbfb.org. You may also consider a donation helping to feed those in need right now.
Garden Club of the Back Bay member Maureen O’Hara reminded us of this terrific Thanksgiving benefit, and her boss Ken Tutunjian of Coldwell Banker Boston is selling pies! Buy pies directly through Ken by searching his name in the Pie in the Sky directory at www.pieinthesky.org. More than a fundraiser, Pie in the Sky fosters community spirit and engages the public in the mission of Community Servings — Massachusetts’ free home-delivered meals and nutrition program for the critically ill.
Each November since 1993, Boston’s best restaurants, bakeries, caterers and hotels donate thousands of pies that over 500 volunteers then sell to family, friends and colleagues. Each pie costs $25, providing a week’s worth of hearty home-delivered meals to a Community Servings’ client and a tasty Thanksgiving treat to the buyer.
Corporate donors provide financial support and donations of in-kind services. Thanks to the dedication and generosity of our pie sellers and volunteers, $.90 of every $1.00 raised in 2010 went directly to feeding Community Servings’ clients.
Rest assured, when you support Community Servings through Pie in the Sky, your contribution goes directly to our neighbors in greatest need — homebound individuals and families struggling with HIV/AIDS, cancer and other life-threatening illnesses and who are too sick to shop or cook for themselves.
Here is how you — the communty — make Pie in the Sky happen.  Over 150 Bakers throughout Greater Boston bake and donate thousands of apple, pecan, pumpkin and sweet potato pies. Over 600 Pie Sellers take orders from their family, friends and coworkers in the weeks before Thanksgiving. You can buy pies and make financial contributions to Community Servings by visiting pieinthesky.org. 75 volunteers gather at the Greater Boston Food Bank for our annual “Box Party” to label 15,000 pie boxes in just 3 hours. Groups of volunteers then head out to deliver bundles of pie boxes and pie tins to each of our 150 bakers. Volunteers pick up the donated pies from pie bakers across Greater Boston and deliver them to “Pie Central.” It takes a lot of space and manpower to organize 15,000 pies! Pies are then shipped to over 60 public distribution points in Boston and the surrounding suburbs. Happy pie buyers retrieve their pies on the day before Thanksgiving at their preselected pick-up location. Pie Buyers enjoy their Thanksgiving celebrations. Thanks to their generosity, Community Servings’ clients sit down to lovingly prepared home-style meals — on Thanksgiving and every day.
A public showing of local area artists with complimentary appetizers & beverages to benefit the Greater Boston Food Bank will take place Wednesday, February 1 from 4:30 – 7 pm. The Blue Glass Cafe at 200 Clarendon Street in Boston (John Hancock Tower) has teamed up with Smile Boston Artist Bren Bataclan, Daruma, the Factory Inc. artists Minatsu Ariga (picture below) & Kotaro Morita, Faith Hyde & Marjorie Montemayor to support the Greater Boston Food Bank with The Smile Project. The Cafe is collaborating with the Greater Boston Food Bank to hold a can drive, as well as to provide donations on a weekly Smile Project item. The event is free – call 617-275-0250 for more information.
Chef Jody Adams invites you to attend a benefit brunch on Sunday, January 30 from 11 – 1 at Rialto Restaurant, One Bennett Street, Harvard Square, Cambridge, in support of the Greater Boston Food Bank’s efforts to end hunger in Eastern Massachusetts. All proceeds will be donated to the Greater Boston Food Bank. $35 per person. Reservations required. Log on to www.rialto-restaurant.com, or call 617-661-5050.
On Tuesday, January 25, from 6 – 9, The Greater Boston Food Bank will be the beneficiary of a heated showdown between the City of Boston’s firehouses when the Boston Firehouse Chili Cook-Off pits firefighter chefs against one another for the title of “Boston Firehouse Chili Champion 2011.” Join the host, Four Seasons Executive Chef Brooke Vosika, and two celebrity guest judges to cast your vote for the best firehouse chili in the city, all for a great cause. The event will take place at The Four Seasons Hotel on Boylston Street. Tickets are $95 per person, and tickets may be purchased on line at www.gbfb.org. Call Gail Favreau at 617-427-5200 for more information. Image from www.freerepublic.com, but we can’t guarantee that these particular firefighters will be the cooks. A girl can dream.
Do you know the Food Bank feeds 83,000 people each week? Come to the open house on Saturday, October 24, from 10 – 2, and learn, get involved, and get inspired. The event will take place at the Yawkey Distribution Center of the Greater Boston Food Bank, 70 South Bay Avenue in Boston.
To achieve its mission, The Food Bank feeds more than 320,000 people annually in nine counties in eastern Massachusetts. They’re poor to middle-class people who can’t make ends meet. They’re our friends, neighbors, and colleagues. The Food Bank is the largest hunger-relief organization in New England and one of the largest food banks in the country. It distributes more than 30 million pounds of food and grocery products annually to a network of nearly 600 member hunger-relief agencies. It is a trusted and efficient resource for these local food pantries, soup kitchens, homeless and residential shelters, youth programs, senior centers, and day-care centers, providing the food they need to feed the hungry.
Bring a non-perishable item to participate in their food drive. There will be limited complimentary parking on site. For directions, and to let the good folks who work there know you’re coming, log on to www.gbfb.org/openhouse/.
