ASDA Donations Help Local Patient Community

ASDA recently donated 402 items collected during their annual food drive to the BMC Food Pantry. This is a 20% increase in the amount of non-perishable food items collected by the group over last year. Additionally, this years’ donations were not brought to the Greater Boston Food Bank, but to the BMC Food Pantry, right on our campus.

The group decided to give this year’s collection to a different organization because they wanted to serve the local patient community.

The BMC Food Pantry feeds approximately 80 families per day and 7,000 people per month. When they opened in 2001, the Pantry distributed items to patients of the BMC pediatric and women’s clinics, but they have since expanded the scope of their work and now take referred patients from all clinics of BMC.

Food Pantry Manager Latchman Hiralall says that they have seen nearly a 75% increase in need in the last three years. One of three full-time staff, he along with one part-time staff member, and a large number of volunteers, sort and bundle food for families based on the family size and dietary needs. The Food Pantry provides three days worth of food to patients every two weeks. The major contributors to the Food Pantry are the Greater Boston Food Bank and Ocean State Job lot, but private donations, like the one from GSDM, are also widely accepted.