KJFS – Volunteer Appreciation Week
This week, April 19 – 25, is National Volunteer Week. Since we can’t thank our volunteers in person while we are sheltering in place, we wanted to thank them virtually and to recognize their incredible efforts today! Thanks to our many volunteers, in 2019 Michael Klahr Jewish Family Services:
· Provided assistance to almost 200 families every month. That’s 35 more per month than in 2018.
· Gave out 242,863 diapers to families in need. That’s over 40,000 more than in 2018!
· Assisted some of the more than 400 asylum seekers who arrived suddenly last summer in Portland.
Our volunteers pick up our food orders and stock our pantry shelves, collect food donations and track inventory, sort and wrap diapers and period products for distribution, help tend the garden at the JCA which provides fresh produce to our clients, and do data entry to help us keep our records in order.
Even with the JCA building closed due to the Covid-19, our volunteers continue to pitch in! They scrambled to reach nearly fifty families and get them food or diapers right before businesses began to close. And they continue to reach out by phone to our families with updated information about food and diaper resources that are still available to them during this difficult period.
We couldn’t do it without you. During this Volunteer Week, we send you our heartfelt thanks!
