Let's get a huge shout out to Catherine and Rachel for the long drive up to Portland (area) to pick up donations from both Bob's Red Mill and Dave's Killer Bread!
Wednesday, April 29, 2020
Tuesday, April 28, 2020
ServSafe Class offered free of charge....
Dear Members,
We would LOVE LOVE it if each and every one of you took the time to take this FREE class that is offered through April 30th ONLY!!! ServSafe is offering their food handlers online course and exam for free.
These courses include essential training every restaurant and foodservice worker needs to keep guests and themselves safe including topics like cooking temperatures, safe storage, and cross-contamination, as well as hygiene, sanitation, and other risk mitigation activities.
This class is the same class that Linn Benton Food Share requires our Gleaning group leaders take and we are encouraged that every member take it as well.
Please take the ServSafe Food Handler class and get your VOLUNTEER time in for this month - it will count toward volunteer hours. Once you are done, please email gleaners@philomathcommunityservices.org a copy of your certificate so we have it on file and let us know the length of time it took you so we can document your hours. Please click the link below to take your class ASAP!
https://www.servsafe.com/freecourses
COVID-19 Community Support Program
Are you an OHP/Medicaid Member?
I wanted to inform you IHN-CCO has expanded flexible service options right now to support members through COVID hardships, through a community support program.Our Medical Management department will process requests for IHN-CCO members who are experiencing hardship due to the COVID-19 pandemic. There are 5 categories this community support program can support:
- Housing assistance (rent, mortgage, hotel, etc.)
- Utility assistance
- Food
- Household items (cleaning supplies, diapers, etc.)
- Transportation
Hardships may include income/job loss, lack of housing to shelter in place, lack of food and household supplies necessary to maintain health and safety, utility needs and transportation issues.Members were recently sent a letter providing this information and how they can submit a request on the samhealth.org IHN page, (this is going through Unite Us.) Letter info as follows:Non-Medical NeedsWe may be able to help you through the hard times right now. If you do not have income, a safe place to stay, healthy food to eat, or other urgent issues, please go to samhealth.org/referralform to contact our Medical Management Department. You can also call the Medical Management Department through our Customer Service team.United Way has also created a webpage that lists many resources in the Benton, Lincoln, and Linn county area. Visit unitedwaylbl.org/covid-19resources for lists and links to other resources you may be able to use.For information about business layoffs, closures, and unemployment benefits, visit govstatus.egov.com/orunemployment_covid19.Members can submit forms here: https://www.ihntogether.org/in-your-community/covid-19-community-support-program
Friday, April 24, 2020
Thursday, April 23, 2020
Gleaner Guidelines for COVID - PLEASE READ ENTIRE POST!
To all members of Philomath Community Gleaners
For a couple of weeks now, there have been numerous texts, emails and complaints about the length of
process and wait times on Saturday to pick up your weekly food. I wish to address these concerns in this Blog so that by Saturday there will be none moving forward.
WHY CHANGES HAPPENED...
With the current COVID-19 trickle down effects and the mandated stay-at-home declaration by Governor Brown, we have had to make sweeping changes to the Gleaner program in order first to preserve the program while protecting volunteers and second to continue to provide needed food to our Gleaner families.
GLEANERS OBLIGATIONS CONTINUE…
Philomath Community Gleaners is still responsible for more than 23 pickups per week. They happen 7
days a week. A couple of weeks ago, we were responsible for 34 because of extras that were offered.
We chose to take them to provide as much food as possible to our members.
These pickups are being done by the same core group of volunteers that nearly every day of the week is
handling repack, running to the warehouse, picking up commodity boxes, delivering to adoptee and
shelter in place families and handling full distribution of more than 12 hours every single Saturday. The
hours of volunteer time on Saturday alone exceeds 105 hours...with those same 8-10 volunteers. On top of those duties is the office tasks which exceed the normal reports and book-keeping, which is now
involving order sheets, request lists, maintaining a Blog for communication, additional grant writing to
secure emergency funds and looking for ways to procure food that is no longer coming through our
regular system, so everyone continues to have food.
THE REASON WHY OUR CREW IS SMALL…
Would we love extra help, absolutely. Why we made the decisions to keep the group small is
1) To limit personal exposure at the site to one another, keeping in compliance with social distancing
2) To limit risk to and from additional families outside of the core group.
We need to keep in mind that our group is comprised of more than 65% of people in the higher risk
categories.
The current work load vs. volunteer limitations is a weekly discussed topic and all involved feel the risk is too great to start bringing in more volunteers at this time. It is most important that we make every effort to keep our families safe.
WHAT IS BEING DONE TO KEEP GLEANER FAMILIES SAFE...
Gleaner efforts to keep our families safe include frequent sanitizing of high traffic areas and contact
points, masks for all volunteers while working in proximity of food to be distributed and within proximity of others, gloves when handling all foods and proper disposal or sanitization of all PPE. We continue to practice social distancing wherever possible in the process of Gleaning food and all other processes involving distribution.
GUIDELINES MOVING FORWARD
Please carefully read this section, you will be responsible for these guidelines from here on. We ask all of our members to do your part and follow these guidelines:
1. Please be patient:
We are always working to make our process better. Variability in food product makes that a new task
every week. We work from 7am until after 9pm some weeks to make this happen.
2. Please remain fully in your car:
To respect the restrictions on the park by the river and to limit exposure to other members who are
waiting, it is vital that everyone remain in their car for the duration of their wait time. NO EXCEPTIONS.
Leave your dog at home, keep your children occupied or leave them at home and please no walking
around, exercising or yoga...our parking lot is not an open park. This is not a request, this is a
requirement, members who do not follow this requirement will be asked to leave the line and WILL NOT BE ALLOWED TO RETURN. Members violating this rule will be suspended from the Gleaner Program until we return to normal operations. This is for the safety of everyone at PCS. We will NOT make exceptions to willful violations of this rule
3. The bathroom at PCS is not available to outside traffic until further notice. No exceptions
4. Please do not come hang out at the side door:
To protect everyone inside and at the site, please, please, please do not come hang out at the side door.
Many of you come without masks, grab the door handles and door frames and wish to visit. We miss you all and wish to have time to visit more, but now is not the time and certainly at the main traffic door is not the place.
5. Please direct genuine complaints to the gleaners@philomathcommunityservices email.
This allows for proper documentation and allows for all officers to review them and decide upon a
unanimous course of action. Alicia will no longer be addressing these kind of concerns, emails or other direct communications to her phone or via reply to the Gleaner texts. This has become very time
consuming and is an unnecessary task for her to be expected to fulfill as the Gleaner Secretary.
Complaints will be handled in a timely manner. The last one was resolved in two days of filing.
6. Please refrain from Unnecessary Phone Calls to our personal phones or PCS phone line.
Added phone calls only eat up work time. We answer 10-15 calls every Saturday morning. Please don't call to ask if it is worth coming to pick up your free food. Please don't call to ask if you can skip the line. Please don't call to ask if you can come on Monday and please don't ask when the delivery crew is arriving with your box of food.
7. Complaints about food choices, and time waiting in line:
It is difficult to be patient with complaints of quality of food, non-organic food choices, dessert preferences and wait times.
As to the food selection, every family is receiving hundreds of dollars in food every single week. Since we cannot offer on site shopping, we take extra time for each and every one of you to try and tailor food choices that you prefer within the limits of the food we have available.
For the wait times... every pickup volunteer on Saturday waits until after their duties just like the rest of
you. For the core group, we are waiting 10-12 hours to take our food home at the end of the work day.
Most weeks we do the bulk of our shopping last. There is little to no program anywhere in Linn and
Benton County that is offering the kind of food we have for no cost.
Please consider the contribution and time of those around you who are supporting this program in this extraordinarily difficult time.
TO ALL OF OUR FAMILIES…
We miss our Gleaner families and members and hope for a quick return to the days where we can be a
complete Gleaner community once again. Please do all you can to take the best care of yourselves, you
families, friends and your neighbors. Help where and when you can and be good stewards of all that you have. Thank you for your contributions in making our program the incredible program that it is.
Sincerely,
Catherine, Patty and Alicia, and our families who support us while we support you.
For a couple of weeks now, there have been numerous texts, emails and complaints about the length of
process and wait times on Saturday to pick up your weekly food. I wish to address these concerns in this Blog so that by Saturday there will be none moving forward.
WHY CHANGES HAPPENED...
With the current COVID-19 trickle down effects and the mandated stay-at-home declaration by Governor Brown, we have had to make sweeping changes to the Gleaner program in order first to preserve the program while protecting volunteers and second to continue to provide needed food to our Gleaner families.
GLEANERS OBLIGATIONS CONTINUE…
Philomath Community Gleaners is still responsible for more than 23 pickups per week. They happen 7
days a week. A couple of weeks ago, we were responsible for 34 because of extras that were offered.
We chose to take them to provide as much food as possible to our members.
These pickups are being done by the same core group of volunteers that nearly every day of the week is
handling repack, running to the warehouse, picking up commodity boxes, delivering to adoptee and
shelter in place families and handling full distribution of more than 12 hours every single Saturday. The
hours of volunteer time on Saturday alone exceeds 105 hours...with those same 8-10 volunteers. On top of those duties is the office tasks which exceed the normal reports and book-keeping, which is now
involving order sheets, request lists, maintaining a Blog for communication, additional grant writing to
secure emergency funds and looking for ways to procure food that is no longer coming through our
regular system, so everyone continues to have food.
THE REASON WHY OUR CREW IS SMALL…
Would we love extra help, absolutely. Why we made the decisions to keep the group small is
1) To limit personal exposure at the site to one another, keeping in compliance with social distancing
2) To limit risk to and from additional families outside of the core group.
We need to keep in mind that our group is comprised of more than 65% of people in the higher risk
categories.
The current work load vs. volunteer limitations is a weekly discussed topic and all involved feel the risk is too great to start bringing in more volunteers at this time. It is most important that we make every effort to keep our families safe.
WHAT IS BEING DONE TO KEEP GLEANER FAMILIES SAFE...
Gleaner efforts to keep our families safe include frequent sanitizing of high traffic areas and contact
points, masks for all volunteers while working in proximity of food to be distributed and within proximity of others, gloves when handling all foods and proper disposal or sanitization of all PPE. We continue to practice social distancing wherever possible in the process of Gleaning food and all other processes involving distribution.
GUIDELINES MOVING FORWARD
Please carefully read this section, you will be responsible for these guidelines from here on. We ask all of our members to do your part and follow these guidelines:
1. Please be patient:
We are always working to make our process better. Variability in food product makes that a new task
every week. We work from 7am until after 9pm some weeks to make this happen.
2. Please remain fully in your car:
To respect the restrictions on the park by the river and to limit exposure to other members who are
waiting, it is vital that everyone remain in their car for the duration of their wait time. NO EXCEPTIONS.
Leave your dog at home, keep your children occupied or leave them at home and please no walking
around, exercising or yoga...our parking lot is not an open park. This is not a request, this is a
requirement, members who do not follow this requirement will be asked to leave the line and WILL NOT BE ALLOWED TO RETURN. Members violating this rule will be suspended from the Gleaner Program until we return to normal operations. This is for the safety of everyone at PCS. We will NOT make exceptions to willful violations of this rule
3. The bathroom at PCS is not available to outside traffic until further notice. No exceptions
4. Please do not come hang out at the side door:
To protect everyone inside and at the site, please, please, please do not come hang out at the side door.
Many of you come without masks, grab the door handles and door frames and wish to visit. We miss you all and wish to have time to visit more, but now is not the time and certainly at the main traffic door is not the place.
5. Please direct genuine complaints to the gleaners@philomathcommunityservices email.
This allows for proper documentation and allows for all officers to review them and decide upon a
unanimous course of action. Alicia will no longer be addressing these kind of concerns, emails or other direct communications to her phone or via reply to the Gleaner texts. This has become very time
consuming and is an unnecessary task for her to be expected to fulfill as the Gleaner Secretary.
Complaints will be handled in a timely manner. The last one was resolved in two days of filing.
6. Please refrain from Unnecessary Phone Calls to our personal phones or PCS phone line.
Added phone calls only eat up work time. We answer 10-15 calls every Saturday morning. Please don't call to ask if it is worth coming to pick up your free food. Please don't call to ask if you can skip the line. Please don't call to ask if you can come on Monday and please don't ask when the delivery crew is arriving with your box of food.
7. Complaints about food choices, and time waiting in line:
It is difficult to be patient with complaints of quality of food, non-organic food choices, dessert preferences and wait times.
As to the food selection, every family is receiving hundreds of dollars in food every single week. Since we cannot offer on site shopping, we take extra time for each and every one of you to try and tailor food choices that you prefer within the limits of the food we have available.
For the wait times... every pickup volunteer on Saturday waits until after their duties just like the rest of
you. For the core group, we are waiting 10-12 hours to take our food home at the end of the work day.
Most weeks we do the bulk of our shopping last. There is little to no program anywhere in Linn and
Benton County that is offering the kind of food we have for no cost.
Please consider the contribution and time of those around you who are supporting this program in this extraordinarily difficult time.
TO ALL OF OUR FAMILIES…
We miss our Gleaner families and members and hope for a quick return to the days where we can be a
complete Gleaner community once again. Please do all you can to take the best care of yourselves, you
families, friends and your neighbors. Help where and when you can and be good stewards of all that you have. Thank you for your contributions in making our program the incredible program that it is.
Sincerely,
Catherine, Patty and Alicia, and our families who support us while we support you.
White Turkey Chili Receipe
Found a yummy recipe for using up the pre-cut turkey we received on Saturday. I actually threw this all in the crockpot and dinner was done! Happy cooking folks.
https://www.tasteofhome.com/recipes/white-turkey-chili/
https://www.tasteofhome.com/recipes/white-turkey-chili/
Monday, April 20, 2020
04/20/2020 - UPDATES/Reminders/Books for kids
Hello Families,
I want to remind everyone a few things:
1. Please DO NOT get out of your car during the drive through distribution.
2. Once we pack the food we can not take it back. We try to not handle any food more than needed for the safety of our families. Please take ALL food home with you, we can not take any food back into the site if you do not want it.
BOOKS FOR KIDS:
We have the books for the kids and will work on getting them to you this weekend. Once your student is done reading the book or books, please let sign up again via the link for books. I will check it every week or 2 for new requests.
I want to remind everyone a few things:
1. Please DO NOT get out of your car during the drive through distribution.
2. Once we pack the food we can not take it back. We try to not handle any food more than needed for the safety of our families. Please take ALL food home with you, we can not take any food back into the site if you do not want it.
BOOKS FOR KIDS:
We have the books for the kids and will work on getting them to you this weekend. Once your student is done reading the book or books, please let sign up again via the link for books. I will check it every week or 2 for new requests.
Sunday, April 19, 2020
A Tribute to Food Share Volunteers!
Watch the following video made by Community Services Consortium - many of the photos are from Philomath! Grab a tissue and know how much you all mean to our community!
https://youtu.be/Zs_1OpDL9lM
https://youtu.be/Zs_1OpDL9lM
Friday, April 17, 2020
Wednesday, April 15, 2020
Garden seed packets
We have garden seeds! Sign up for what you would like so we can put some packets together for your family!
https://forms.gle/h23zvMdGnX4PCvPS8
https://forms.gle/h23zvMdGnX4PCvPS8
Tuesday, April 14, 2020
Photo's from Saturday 4.11.2020
Some more behind the scenes photo's of what our volunteers are working with on a Saturday at Gleaners
Monday, April 13, 2020
Stimulus Check Article
This article was sent in to our email from a member and thought it might be good to share with our families:
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2020/04/10/coronavirus-who-doesnt-get-stimulus-check-millions-people-left-out/5112027002/
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2020/04/10/coronavirus-who-doesnt-get-stimulus-check-millions-people-left-out/5112027002/
Friday, April 10, 2020
4 / 11 / 2020 Shopping Sign up
Shopping 4/11/2020 - SIGN UP
If you can't see the link, please call Alicia @ 541-231-7127 and she will enter your information in the form via the phone call. Please enter your order ASAP!
CLICK the LINK BELOW to SIGN UP on the form:
https://forms.gle/MCtdq9uU3wtYKnBd6
Wednesday, April 8, 2020
Books for Kids!!!!
Books for Kids!!!!
Hello Gleaners! Do you have a child in school that needs some books to read? Look no further!A community group of like-minded individuals would like to contribute books to the children in our group on either a weekly basis or as the children finish a book. These books will be given to children that are K-12. The lead volunteer is a retired schoolteacher who wants to make sure our kiddos continue to have access to books through the summer.
https://forms.gle/XQpp2Am4gr7QUKSk6
Sunday, April 5, 2020
Saturday 4/4 Photos of the day!
This is what is happening behind the scenes on a Saturday currently. Thanks to the team members who are working diligently to keep our families well fed! We appreciate each and every one of you!
Shitake Mushroom Info
Here are a few links to excellent info on Shiitake Mushrooms - medicinal and culinary - yum!
https://www.nutritionadvance.com/shiitake-mushrooms-health-benefits/
https://draxe.com/nutrition/shiitake-mushrooms/
https://www.nutritionadvance.com/shiitake-mushrooms-health-benefits/
https://draxe.com/nutrition/shiitake-mushrooms/
Friday, April 3, 2020
Thursday, April 2, 2020
Authorization for food deliveries to our members
Hello Gleaners,
We are working away this week to prepare for Saturday distribution. We hope you are well.
We have a new document for those who deliver / pickup food for others and do home deliveries. We will have these forms available on Saturday if you need us to print it.
The form is DUE by April 11th. We will not allow delivery of food to a home without authorization.
Authorized Representative Form HERE
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