For Johannsen lab graduate student Lily Wenger (Cancer Biology Graduate Program), it has always been important to give back to the community. Working with a friend, Katie Strother, and with support from fellow graduate students Audrey Chambers and Sarah Lofland, and McArdle’s Chris Carollo-Zeuner, Lily recently organized a holiday food drive in support of the Madison-Area Goodman Center, with donations going to Goodman’s Annual Thanksgiving Basket Drive and the Fritz Food Pantry.
Prior to the holiday, the team collected more than three full large boxes of food and goods and >$100 in cash donations. Potential donors were also linked to the Goodman Center’s Amazon online “wish list” for their Thanksgiving Basket Drive.
Wenger reflected, “There is a lot of grief and hardship in our current climate on numerous different scales, and so being able to make a positive impact, however small, is a wonderful thing.” Wenger was especially motivated to set up a food drive this year because of the challenges so many in the Madison area had been facing due to federal uncertainty on SNAP benefits.
The Goodman Center has held its Thanksgiving Basket Drive for more than 30 years, with >4,000 families registered for baskets this year, serving more than 25,000 Dane County residents. Items for the Thanksgiving baskets included frozen turkeys, mac and cheese, stuffing, broth, mashed potatoes, canned vegetables, cranberry sauce, gravy, brownie mixes, butter, and rolls. Everything else that did not fit into these categories was donated to the Fritz Food Pantry.
The need was so great this year that Goodman had to stop accepting basket applications after only a few hours. Despite this, Wenger says, “The community showed up, and together we were able to collect more food for holiday meals and for the general pantry than ever before.”
Wenger also noted Goodman Center contact Florence Edwards-Miller shared that they “have continued to see high demand in [their] pantry, and now [they’re] back to a point of really needing the community to continue to give.” Folks tend to donate to food pantries around the holidays, but we should remember that hunger in Dane County is a problem year-round. Contact info@goodmancenter.org to see how you can get involved.
