A number of years ago, I became involved with Bend Food Project, a local nonprofit started by a group of friends in 2015 to help curb hunger in our area. Modeled after similar projects around the country, the door-to-door food collection system is both simple and efficient. Donors buy an extra can or box of non-perishable food when they go shopping and place those in a green bag (in some other programs the bags are blue). The bag is picked up outside their front door every other month by neighborhood managers like me, who leave an empty one behind. The full bags are dropped off at the Bend Food Project collection site where volunteers are waiting to unload their cars, empty the bags, and sort all the food, which is used to stock to the local food pantry.
I love the simple, efficient approach that makes donating food to help curb hunger so easy. So, when the organization sent out an email asking for a volunteer to write profiles about volunteers who were doing even more to help out, I jumped. Below you’ll find one of the profiles I wrote up. I hope this inspires you as much as it does me.
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Sandra Henderson believes in community service. She and her husband volunteered with the homeless in Colorado before moving back to Oregon, where they were originally from. Soon after their arrival in 2019, Sandra met a person involved with the Bend Food Project and signed up as a green bag donor. Within the year, the neighborhood coordinator in Sunriver, where Sandra and her husband live, moved away, so she took that on and grew that area’s donor pool. She and her husband also started volunteering at the Bend Food Project warehouse to help sort the nonperishable food donations and stock the shelves on collection days.
But that wasn’t enough for Sandra. So, last summer, the 68-year-old decided to sell a couple of the quilts she makes at Sunriver’s quilt guild sale and donate the proceeds to the Bend Food Project. Unbeknownst to Sandra, that same day her friend, Judy Johnson, who also lives in Sunriver, had brought a bunch of her quilts into the bookstore, with the profits also going to the Bend Food Project. Together, they raised $2,025. That would be just the start of their efforts to curb hunger.
Most quilters love making quilts. So, they make a lot of them, more than they can give away. A week or so later, Sandra looked at Judy and said, “I’ve got a bunch of quilts I’d love to sell.”
“The dozen quilts I sold at the bookstore were the tip of the iceberg for me,” Judy responded.
They quickly realized that between them they could probably gather 50 quilts. Once they figured out where they could hold the sale and how to handle the logistics, Judy’s daughter made flyers. That was before the mother had gone to her storage unit and Sandra had climbed into the attic. They wound up having to cross out the 50 on the flyers and replace it with 100.
Then Sandra and Judy mentioned what they were doing to a few of their quilting friends. Eight weeks later, the pair had amassed 161 quilts for the sale. Maybe they could raise $5,000 to help curb hunger, they thought.
They set up the night before the sale. “On Friday morning, we get there, all excited,” recalls Sandra. “We had visions of people standing in line. At 9 o’clock, there was nobody. Not a soul.” Worried that their event was proving to be a bust, Sandra wondered what she should do. She didn’t have to wonder long. “Within 30 minutes, we were packed,” she says. “Some people came and bought three to four quilts. Others came just to support Bend Food Project, whether they needed a quilt or not.”
That day they sold 120 quilts and cleared $12,000, well over twice the amount they had hoped for. “It was really important to me that every nickel we raised went to the Bend Food Project,” says Sandra. So she was thrilled that they didn’t even have to pay the $500 in costs for the room rental, printing of flyers, and assorted other things needed for the sale since an anonymous donor covered those.
Now, with 41 quilts left over from last year, Sandra and Judy already have the seed for this year’s quilt sale, which they anticipate will be even bigger and better. “Last year was a trial balloon,” says Sandra. “This year, being able to give advance notice, I have numerous friends making quilts for the sale. I’ll be making some and Judy, who’s become a food donor, has already made some.”
Sandra and Judy are shooting for 200 quilts this year. But with Sandra planning to talk about their event to the many quilt guilds in the area, they may wind up with even more. As before, reasonable prices that often barely cover the cost of materials should drive sales. Since they sold every one of the crib and children’s quilts last year, there will be plenty of those along with full-sized quilts.
This year’s show is set for October 28, 2023, at the Unitarian Fellowship, which is providing the space for free. Sandra and Judy hope that the quilt sale becomes an annual event, and are even talking about an additional spring sale. It would seem you can’t keep a good quilter down, especially when feeding the hungry is involved.
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