Archive: Around Town

Hundreds of Cornell alumni and students participated this January, at 37 sites across the world to connect and make a difference as part of the Public Service Center's Cornell Cares Day.
 
Each year early in January students and alumni work together on service projects in their hometown while Cornell is on break. The Cornell Public Service Center (PSC) works with Cornell regional alumni clubs to implement the program.
 
This year The Cornell Club of Ithaca, held its event at Foodnet Meals on Wheels. They packed 29 Breakfast bags of good, nutritional food items for distribution. Nine Cornellians, mostly grad students and two alums, including event organizer C.J. DelVecchio and Cornell Club of Ithaca Board member Aaron Godert helped out.
 
The Cornell Club of Northern New Jersey held its Cornell Cares Day event at The Community Foodbank of New Jersey.  They had 77 participants, including 9 current Cornell students sort food for two hours.  In total they sorted 16 pallets of food that will go out to the state's food insecure. Attendees included future Cornellians, members of the neighboring Cornell Club of Central New Jersey, and several multi-generational Cornell families, including Susan Levy '86, event co-coordinator and here daughter, Dara Levy, '16, who helped run the event with her mother.
 
"This event is always rewarding and memorable for the volunteers, with many returning to help year after year. It's a meaningful way for the Cornell community to come together and make a difference, said Dara Levy, '16"
 
In Boston, MA, 30 alumni and guests volunteered at the Greater Boston Food Bank in the 15th annual Cornell Cares Day in Boston. Zuania Pomales Wood '00, one of the founders of Cornell Cares Day, participated once again this year. The group, contributed to sorting a total of 9,232 pounds of food (7,385 pounds salvageable), making 6,154 meals possible.
 
Additional Cornell Cares Day highlights from January included:

• In Milwaukee WI, the Cornell Club of Wisconsin hosted a lunch and performed other volunteer services for Kathy's House, a "Hospital Hospitality House" for a family or family member in need of hospital care in the Milwaukee Area. They cleaned rooms; sorted, organized, and prepared promotional material for delivery; loaded furniture for delivery; and aside from hosting the lunch, the group also cooked the side dishes, prepared the fruit salad, and setup / broke down the event venue; while Maxie's Restaurant provided the sumptuous main dishes of pulled pork and BBQ chicken.  
• The Cornell Club of Monmouth/Ocean Counties volunteered at the OASIS farm center, a vocational training facility for young adults with autism, in Middletown, NJ
• The Cornell Alumni Club in Thailand volunteered at a Mangrove Forest Conservation Center. Approximately sixty participants, including ten undergraduate students from the Public Service Center's Global Citizenship and Sustainability Initiative, a community based research project in Thailand, along with students from Mahidol University planted mangroves and learned about the ecosystem of the region.
• In Philadelphia, The Cornell Club of Greater Philadelphia 50 participants volunteered worked at Philabundance Hunger Relief Center warehouse, the Greater Philadelphia region's largest hunger relief organization. The group sorted and quality checked over eight tons of food (breaking a Philabundance record!) which will now be available to regional families in need.
• The Cornell Club of Greater Capital District hosted an event at the Food Bank of Northeastern NY. The group sorted and re-packed over 11,000 pounds of food in just two hours.  The re-packed food was then distributed by the Regional Food Bank to food pantries in their region.
• In Houston, The Cornell Club of Houston group working with other volunteers produced 5,400 weekend meal packages In 3+ hours. This equal to 32,400 meals.
• Cornell Club Central Valley hosted an event at FoodLink, a food distribution center for over 87 outlets in Tulare County.
• The Cornell Club of Minnesota hosted an event at Second Harvest Heartland of the Twin Cities where Cornell students and alums repackaged bulk pasta and onions into family size containers for families throughout Minnesota and Western Wisconsin. In two hours, the whole shift had an output of over 6700 pounds of food. This translated into each volunteer helping to feed 84 people.
• The Cornell Club of Sacramento organized boxes at Habitat for Humanity Restore.
• The Cornell Club of Western Washington worked at the Issaquah Food Bank where nineteen volunteers hauled crates from the freezer, bagged and labeled flour, moved eggs from dozen to half dozen cartons, and cleaned the pickup office.

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