Editor’s note: The following is a copy of a letter sent to Rich Cutting of Bliss Salon, reprinted with the author’s permission.
Dear Mr. Cutting,
On behalf of all of us at the Marblehead Food Pantry, I want to offer you our heartfelt thank you for your wonderfully generous donation of a half-page ad in the Marblehead Current for a local non-profit organization. We are delighted to have been chosen as the recipient by the Current. When I went to your website, I was very much impressed with your listing of all the non-profit organizations you have supported locally. It says a lot about your business philosophy, and we are honored to now be among them.
A few years ago, we were part of the Essex County Hunger Relief website that included a page for every food pantry and soup kitchen in Essex County. That whole website went down and it never came back, and we lost a great communication tool.
Since then, our pantry has had several significant changes due to our having had to move to a different location in the building we are in. This is a much smaller space, and we have had to change the location and time where and when we can accept food donations, an important source of our food supply. We weren’t able to do a very good job of communicating with the community, and there has been a fair amount of confusion and some reduction in donations.
We are in the process of setting up our own website, but that’s not going to happen overnight, so you and The Current stepped in at the right time and in the right way.
Our pantry has seen a significant increase in the numbers of people we are seeing each week. About a year ago our average number was 50-60 households and now it has risen most of the time to 60-70+. Over the past several months, we have welcomed several refugee families, especially from Afghanistan and Ukraine, who have settled in our community and have been coming to the pantry. Also, the still-high cost of food and most everything else has brought people in to use the pantry that hadn’t needed to come before.
Your generous donation of this ad is a welcome and wonderful help in our efforts to keep up with the weekly needs of this increased number of folks. Today, the first day our food donation site has been open since the ad last week, someone brought in seven bags of food as a result of seeing the ad, and a couple of other donors also had seen it. Please know that you are truly helping to make a difference in the lives of those in our community who are struggling with life’s challenges.
With gratitude for your thoughtful and creative generosity, we wish you and your salon all the best in the months to come.
Janet Fitch Parker, director
Marblehead Food Pantry
