We’re proud to share Tallan Business Development Manager, Matthew Gianquinto, recently volunteered at Foodshare’s distribution operation outside Rentschler Stadium in East Hartford. Rentschler Stadium has been the site of large-scale food assistance distribution for many months, providing drive-through no-questions-asked help to people in need. Matt has volunteered a number of times at Foodshare’s HQ in Bloomfield, sorting food with members of the Temple University Greater Hartford Alumni Chapter.
It is another thing entirely to be on site putting that food into the thousands of cars waiting hours prior to the facility opening up.
Matthew Gianquinto, Tallan Business Development Manager
Matt remarked on the experience further:
“The need in CT knows no political or municipal boundaries. What’s most striking about helping at Foodshare this week, ten-plus months into this health and economic crisis, is how persistent and pervasive the need remains. We served about 2,000 cars on Tuesday, and later this week Foodshare is likely to surpass a milestone of 8,000,000 pounds of food distributed since the crisis began.
The second most striking thing is seeing—again, ten-plus months in—how folks in CT are continuing to respond to help their neighbors. About 40 volunteers, some who have been helping for a long time, some affiliated with different civic organizations, even some members of the Air National Guard showed up on a January morning to dutifully get their assignments and take their places. From 9:30-1:30 we performed an efficiently organized ballet placing produce, meat, bread and other essentials into two lines of slow-rolling cars.
I’m grateful for the chance to make a small contribution to this enormous effort, and encourage other Tallaners to do the same if you have the chance. This operation involves a couple on-site staff members to coordinate logistics and operate the forklifts, but it runs because of volunteers that continue to show up to support people from their communities in a time of great need.”
Drive-thru food distribution for the East Hartford Foodshare location is every Tuesday and Thursday from 9:30 AM -to 1:00 PM at the Rentschler Field Silver Lane Entrance (615 Silver Lane, East Hartford, CT). Click here to learn more about Foodshare’s distribution locations.
Click here to learn more about Tallan’s commitment to philanthropy.