Food shelf welcomes usable donations

Peter LaBelle
Ludlow
To the editor,

The Black River Good Neighbors’ thrift store and food shelf relies heavily on the generosity of its donors. The store sells donated merchandise and that allows us to provide free food and other assistance to those who need it. We deeply appreciate all of you who donate salable goods to us. You make our services viable. But not everyone is so kind. We cannot use items that really should go to the transfer station or some classes of items that for whatever reason we simply cannot use.

On a recent Sunday morning a gray hatchback backed up in our lot and, even though the donation shed was open and had lots of room, the driver and passenger dumped many boxes of smelly, broken and very worn items on the ground. The weather forecast called for rain, and rain it did. By the time our employees arrived on Monday whatever may have been useful was a junky mess. That gesture then cost us more than 33 dollars at the transfer station.

We don’t know whether these folks had a genuine intent to donate something useful to us, or if they were too cheap to pay the transfer station, but that really doesn’t matter. Their actions didn’t help us. We had to divert money from helping people to paying trash fees.

Our staff is ready to help with any donation. If they turn someone away it’s not because they are being mean. An item may have real value to the donor, but may still not be useable. 

Please come during store hours. Our staff can check out any donation and help determine what we can use. If you must come on Sunday, please use the donation shed. We want to help and we hate to turn people away.

 

Peter LaBelle

Ludlow