News

October 2016 Newsletter

• October 2016 •
Calendar
LFR Direct Mail Campaign
Month of November
 
Give!Local Kickoff Party at Highland Brewery
Wednesday, November 2, 6:00-9:00 PM
 
Loaves & Fishes Alternative Gifts Fair, First Presbyterian Church of Asheville
First Presbyterian Church of Asheville
Sunday, December 4,
9:00 AM–12:45 PM
 
LFR Annual Cookie Party
Kenilworth Center
Friday, December 16,
6:00-8:00 PM
2016 Cookie Party!

Loving Food Resources hosts its annual Holiday Cookie Party on Friday, December 16, at the Kenilworth Center, 4 Chiles Avenue, from 6 to 8 PM.  Bring 4 dozen or more homemade cookies to help fill 200 cake boxes with cookies for the clients of Loving Food Resources and some to share.  Coffee and milk will be provided. Cookies may also be dropped off at Ace Hardware on Merrimon Avenue on December 16 for delivery to the church (before 4 PM).

This is a great event for families and small children to get in the spirit of the holidays and an easy way to teach kids that volunteering is fun.  For more information, contact Betty Sharpless at (828) 273-2531 or [email protected].

Welcome LFR’s New Treasurer!
We are pleased to announce the appointment of Stephen M. Sloan as our new Treasurer and Board Member. Stephen is a Financial Representative at Northwestern Mutual and a graduate of Montreat College and the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies in Kibbutz Ketura, Israel. Stephen is a certified Wilderness First Responder and holds a NC Department of Insurance License. His volunteer experience includes interning at the Holocaust Center in Peabody, MA.

We are excited to have Stephen as part of our leadership team!
 

About LFR
Loving Food Resources provides basic needs to people living with HIV/AIDS or in Home Hospice with any condition through food, health and personal care items. LFR is a volunteer-drive non-profit dependent entirely on its fundraisers, small grants, and the assistance offered by good friends, local businesses and faith communities.

Thank you for considering LFR in your legacy giving.

How to reach us: 
828-255-9282

E-mail: [email protected]

Website: www.lovingfood.org

Facebook: www.facebook.com/ LovingFoodResources

Twitter: @LFRFood

Fall Flurries of Activity
Just as the woodland critters are scurrying about storing up food for winter, there has been a flurry of activity here at the pantry as we take advantage of college students being back at school and launch new programs that are outlined in our strategic plan.

In this newsletter is an article skillfully crafted by one of our Lenoir-Rhyne dietetic interns, describing how our partnership with Lenoir-Rhyne is helping us to enable our clients to make healthy choices when choosing food in the pantry. Sadly, our dietician on the Board, Sandy Buchanan, resigned her Board membership because she is moving out-of-state. Fortunately for us, Lauren Brady, Dietetic Internship Coordinator at Lenoir-Rhyne, was pleased to be invited to join our Board. She will continue Sandy’s work of ensuring that our clients receive information that will guide them in their food choices.

We have two interns from Warren Wilson College, Dakota Bentley who is with us on Tuesday afternoons, and Liz Normile from the newly launched Warren Wilson Community Writing Studio. Dakota cheerfully completes any task presented to him and Liz will be conducting interviews for an article to run in our Winter quarter newsletter and possibly helping with grant writing.

Thanks to a meeting with Scott Eldredge, Communications Professor at WCU, we now have students from the Communications program producing two videos for LFR. We are very excited about the possibilities for using these videos and we are looking forward to viewing the finished product. One of their crew, senior Sally Morris, will be interning with LFR in the Spring, helping us with public relations, marketing and event planning.

We are so fortunate to be situated near so many community-oriented colleges and universities and to have the opportunity to channel their talented students in ways that will benefit our clients.

May your Fall schedule include plenty of space for enjoying the beauty of this season!

Blessings,
—Nancy Gavin
Executive Director

From Our President
We all know that change is inevitable. Just look around and see the changes that have occurred in your lifetime. For example, technology has touched all of our lives and changed the way we do things. It is also said that the more things change, the more they stay the same,” and so it is with Loving Food Resources. We have undergone some significant changes recently.

Some of our long time Board members have rotated off the Board of Directors and a number of new members have joined our Board. Thanks to a People in Need grant we received from the Community Foundation of Western North Carolina, we were able to hold a retreat for our Board members where we developed an ambitious Strategic Plan for the next five years. This plan is designed to move us into the future. A future where we will be working to expand our outreach to provide services to some underserved areas in Western North Carolina. A future where, with the continued assistance from our many volunteers and supporters, we will have adequate resources to carry out our mission to provide food, health and personal care items to people in 18 counties of Western North Carolina who are living with HIV/AIDS, or who are in Home Hospice care with any diagnosis. A future where we will provide ongoing education about healthy food choices and easy preparation of nutritious meals with the food available at LFR.

As LFR enters its 26th year of serving our community, what hasn’t changed and has remained the central focus of our efforts is to offer nutritious food and individual choices to those who come to LFR. What hasn’t changed is our dedication to our mission, as stated above, and carrying out that mission while showing love and compassion to our clients while serving their needs.

A sincere thank you to all of our dedicated volunteers who spend countless hours at the pantry and behind the scenes, ensuring that no one seeking our assistance is turned away and that everyone who enters the doors of LFR is treated with dignity and respect and every effort is made to meet their needs. A special thank you to all of our supporters without whose ongoing support we would not be able to successfully continue our service to our community for the last 25 years and into the future.

Keep an eye out for future newsletters with updates on the implementation of our strategic plan and contact us if you would like to be a part of our changing, while remaining the same, family.

—Paul Le Schack
President, Board of Directors

Loving Food Resources & Lenoir Rhyne University Dietetic Interns:
A Healthy Partnership
Having the opportunity to provide healthy and useful information for others is one of the many roles a dietetic intern has, but being able to partner with an organization that cares just as much, if not more, about providing food and nutrition resources to those in need is even more meaningful. Loving Food Resources has partnered with Lenoir Rhyne University’s dietetic interns to provide simple and useful cooking demos for their participants. These cooking demos provide not only a great opportunity for the interns to develop their cooking and teaching skills, but also a chance to show others how to simply and deliciously include fresh fruits and vegetables in their diets. Many of these food demos will include fruits or vegetables that some may not know how to prepare or what to do with, such as earlier this month when interns showed clients an easy guacamole recipe using avocados available at the pantry. Upcoming cooking demos will be on Saturday October 8, Saturday November 12, and Saturday December 3.

For those who may not know who or what a dietetic intern is, they are a recent graduate with a Bachelor’s and/or Master’s degree in Nutrition & Dietetics from an accredited university, meaning a university whose program is approved by the Academy of Nutrition & Dietetics. In order to become a practicing Registered Dietitian, interns must first complete a dietetic internship including 1,200 hours of practice, supervised by other registered dietitians. Throughout the internship, dietetic interns complete a multitude of projects and activities within community, administrative, and clinical environments so they are fully prepared for a variety positions they may hold in the future as nutrition professionals. Collaborating with Loving Food Resources provides a valuable community experience for dietetic interns to carry with them throughout their internship and into the future. Having an understanding of how food pantries operate is very beneficial, especially for future dietitians who may work for large foodbanks, who hire registered dietitians to help work toward providing more nutritious offerings and resources for the food pantries and other agencies they supply.

Loving Food Resources has provided a unique and important opportunity for Lenoir Rhyne’s dietetic interns to not only do what they love, but to learn more about the resources available for people in the community. Through experiences such as these, interns are learning how they can play a role as future dietitians to help elevate the food and nutrition access and education in their communities.

—Anna Apostolou
Lenoir-Rhyne University Dietetic Intern

Loving Givers
Loving Foods Resources has surely gone through some major changes the past few years. The growth has been nothing but wonderful, and with growth comes more people. The Board has grown. The volunteer base has grown. We now have our Executive Director, Nancy Gavin. There is too much goodness to list.

We wish to thank those who have donated to Loving Foods or helped sponsor events such as our annual Affair in White. This year’s Affair in White was once again held on the top floor of the ever-so-stunning Renaissance Hotel. Their service and support is overwhelming and greatly appreciated. What a show it was, full of glorious treats, sparkling champagne, beautiful conversations from all types of special souls, not to mention the lovely glimpse of the sunset in this city we all love to call home. We wouldn’t change a thing about this year’s event other than hoping to only grow for next year’s.

Our Direct Mail Outreach will begin in early November. We wish to thank those involved in making this happen. There is so much that goes on behind the scenes to make this wonderful organization operate properly. This is a wonderful way to gain support from donors and also reach out to new friends who may be interested in making a contribution to this loving cause that has made us all fall in love with a purpose. We truly want to thank every single person who has supported us, whether it be with your helping hands, financially, referring others to us… the list goes on and on.

If you are not familiar with the Give! Local Campaign that took place at The Orange Peel last year right in our own hometown, you will not be disappointed when you get to know it! It was such a lovely way to learn about other local non-profits while also cheering on our very own pantry. People can donate at the event or even from home, and due to our success last year we were asked to participate again this year. We are beyond humbled and couldn’t be happier to say “I do!” This year’s event will be held in December. Be sure to check our website for updates.

As always, thank you all for putting the Loving in our Foods Resources. We could not do anything without helping hands and giving hearts.

—Becca Gage
Board Secretary

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