Charter volunteers give Monroe Food Pantry an extreme makeover – Monroe Courier

Volunteers gathered to repair the Food Pantry.

Saturday, June 24 dawned gray and wet, but the crew from Charter Communications wasnt daunted by a few mere cloudbursts. Then, the sun parted the clouds around 10 a.m., providing Charters 49 employee volunteers with a picture-perfect day to do home improvements at 980 Monroe Turnpike home of the Monroe Food Pantry.

The Charter volunteers spent the entire day replacing windows, painting, landscaping and performing other valuable sprucing-up at the Food Pantry. Many of them work in offices and on cable crews, but this was not a new task for this team: Each month, Charter volunteers do much the same thing at homes for needy people throughout Connecticut.

Its all part of the companys nationwide philanthropic initiative, Spectrum Housing Assist. This program focuses on safe and healthy homes and aims to refurbish 25,000 homes by the year 2020.

The Food Pantrys 1960s-era ranch house became a candidate for such a makeover because it serves approximately 250 needy Monroe families each month. This is Charters second project in Monroe and the timing was opportune. All its windows sorely needed replacement, putting the Pantry, its staff and volunteers at the mercy of weather extremes.

It could often be cold in the house and in the summer it was usually very, very warm, noted Pantry Coordinator Wendy Jolls. It was not a comfortable place to be. These improvements will mean the world to us.

In Connecticut, Spectrum Housing Assist works in partnership with HomeFront, a volunteer organization that provides free repairs to low-income homeowners. HomeFront currently is serving Fairfield, Litchfield, Hartford and New Haven Counties in Connecticut; and Westchester County in New York.

Throughout the course of the day, the Charter volunteers replaced a total of 18 windows and three exterior doors. These enhancements will make the house both more comfortable as a community facility and more energy efficient to operate.

Vital community resource

The Food Pantry used to be located next to the Edith Wheeler Memorial Library at Town Hall. It moved to its present location approximately 10 years ago when the former owner of the house donated it to the town for this purpose. For people who do not rely on the Food Pantry, the house blends in well with the others along busy Monroe Turnpike.

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Despite its size, the Pantry only distributes food: no meals are prepared here. And though Monroe is perceived as a well-heeled, upscale town, there is no shortage of demand. The Pantry stays busy year round, with a slight uptick during winter.

Our clients usually come once a month on an appointed day, and do a full shop of dry goods, canned meats and vegetables, meat and eggs, Jolls noted. Then each week clients will come back for bread, milk and fresh produce.

The latter are often vegetables and herbs grown right in the Pantrys own backyard, a project that has been spearheaded by volunteers from several Monroe churches. They do all the planting, weeding, hoeing and harvesting, and the garden has grown over the years.

Thanks to the Spectrum volunteers, were adding a third garden today, said Jolls.

People never want to rely on the Pantry for food, Jolls pointed out. Many are under- or unemployed, with property taxes overdue, bills maxxed out and cupboards stripped bare.

Our clients are family, and we want the Pantry to be a comfortable place to come, said Jolls.

Charters volunteers came from offices in Stamford, Newtown and Winsted, with a mix of project newcomers and veterans. The Connecticut volunteers are just one part of a nationwide team that has refurbished 9,000 houses in 41 states with another 16,000 to go by 2020.

There are certainly other charities that we support, but this is our biggest, said Heidi VanDenBroek, Charters senior communications manager for New England. Volunteering is a great opportunity for our people as well, because their work has a tremendous impact in the communities where we live and work.

Accent on teamwork

Much of work life involves organizing projects, dividing them up into smaller tasks and determining who will do what. At this work site, the Charter team functioned much the same. Three volunteer co-captains took responsibility for different parts of the job, each assembling a crew of people who wanted to work on that aspect of work.

Monroes own Diana Verano, a marketing manager in Stamford, oversaw the crew painting the Pantrys interior. Her co-worker, Bill Baker, headed up the exterior painting crew. Rich Decava, a line-crew supervisor in Newtown, oversaw the carpentry efforts including the massive window-replacement project.

Verano said the company encounters no difficulty in recruiting volunteers. When we send out a call for volunteers, people immediately respond, she said.

At least one parent-child team turned out to work on the Food Pantry. They were Jim Dove, group vice president of business intelligence at Charter and his daughter, Hannah, a junior at Weston High School. Were all excited about doing this and a lot has been accomplished in just a few hours, Hannah said.

Were all very resilient some of us have done renovations in 40-degree weather, Baker noted. So even though we got off to a bit of a late start, Mother Nature cooperated and made this a great day for us all to be here.

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Charter volunteers give Monroe Food Pantry an extreme makeover - Monroe Courier