Two 10-year-old Albany Girl Scouts are celebrating their successful opening of a food pantry on New Scotland Avenue.
While fifth graders Eva Maddox and Abbey Witonsky say they love their outdoor activities and camping trips with their Girl Scout troop, they wanted to do something to help their community.
“We saw classmates and people in the school, well, people around the school, dealing with food insecurities,” Witonksy said.
“I felt bad for really anyone, like when you're driving out of Walmart and you see the people with the signs, it's sad,” Maddox said. “And just like kids in our class, we give up our lunches to them. Like this girl. I'm not going to name her. Let's say ‘Mackenzie.’ I was giving her some my lunch,” Maddox said.
And because of their hard work - a newly-installed food pantry sits outside the New Scotland Elementary School. Maddox and Witonsky wanted to address food insecurity, so they went to their school principals for approval for the pantry. Assistant Principal Timitra Rose says they were proud of the student proposal.
“They approached the building principal, Lesley Buff, and myself. They had a full presentation on building or installing this food pantry on school grounds. This is the first time this has ever happened, especially coming to us from students. And once we got the approval, they were off on their own to decide where the pantry would be and made all the plans in having it constructed. So, we’re very proud of the them.
Rose added the two girls were even making press calls the morning before the ribbon cutting ceremony to raise awareness for the project. Classmates and community partners gathered to celebrate the girls’ achievement with the ribbon-cutting ceremony.
Rose says, for its part, the elementary school provides free breakfast and offers lunch in the afternoons. They also have a weekend “feed and read” program, which sends qualifying students home for the weekend with a bag full of groceries and books to read.
The Albany–Multi-Craft Apprenticeship Preparation Program helped construct the pantry and LaFortune and Family Construction donated the paint.
The girls’ co-Troop Leader, Katherine Nadeau awarded them with the Bronze Award, which is given to scouts who demonstrate advanced project planning skills and commit at least 20 hours to designing and implementing a lasting community service project. She says all the Juniors in their troop received the award this year.
“They worked with their Girl Scout troop and now, as a result, they have this fantastic free food pantry, which is going too far outlive the work that they've done this year and it's going to continue giving to the community and helping to address the root cause of the problem that they identified, which is hunger here in the New Scotland neighborhood.”
After the ribbon cutting ceremony, Maddox and Witonksy joined their classmates in stocking the new pantry with food.
Nadeau hopes this is only the first of many food pantries.
“These kids, there's no stopping these scouts and I have no doubt that we're going to see a lot more of these and we're going to see even better things to come!”
