A Day Made On…not Off! Cranford Community Service Project Fair
On January 18, 2016, the Cranford Alliance Church held its fourth annual Service Project Fair for the Cranford community in conjunction with the Interfaith Community. The national holiday to commemorate Dr. Martin Luther King’s Birthday was designated as a national day of service. Dr. King envisioned everyone taking an active role in making our country great by achieving common goals and by strengthening our communities. Participants of all ages had the opportunity to complete several hands-on service projects, which not only benefitted the recipients, but gave the participants the opportunity to use community action to serve others.
Our goal was to serve at least 150 children for each of the food projects (Community Food Bank and Cranford Family Care) and 30 families (Women’s Shelter) with cleaning products. We asked the 10 houses of worship in the Cranford Clergy Council to collect the items we needed to complete the service projects.
With everyone’s support, this year we made 500 sandwiches for St. Joseph Social Services in Elizabeth, 100 weekend backpack meal bags for Community Food Bank in Hillside, boxes filled with hundreds of juice boxes and snacks for Cranford Family Care, which also was the recipient of our snack stand money that day. We sent 40 hand decorated drawstring bags filled with toiletries to the Women’s Shelter in Elizabeth, dozens of hand decorated baby t-shirts and bibs, along with 40 or so packages of diapers to Raphael’s Life House. In addition, we were able to donate 24 buckets with cleaning products with hand decorated refrigerator magnets to Family Promise of Union County and to FISH Hospitality Program, 40 paper floral arrangements to the Woodland Nursing Home, 30 felt bookmarks went to Clark Rehabilitation Center and also to Veterans Hospital in East Orange, and 50 Valentine’s Day finger puppets and cards to Children’s Specialized Hospital.
We had a lot of high school students this year who volunteered to manage many of the projects. Thank you to all who participated. It was definitely a day made ON, not off!
