Rotary Club member Jon Moore organizes donated food Saturday, March 7. Six carts were filled in the first two hours. The collection brings the total amount of food and cash raised to over $100,000 since the effort began in 2013. —Scott Mullin photo
Standing on the sidewalk asking strangers to open their wallets and give isn’t easy. It’s not the sort of job that causes everyone to jump up, waving their hands, when the call goes out for volunteers.
Help put on the church fair — it’s a social occasion. Coach a team, and hear the crowds cheer. Volunteer to help build a playground — cue the hero music. But volunteer to collect money for a cause — no matter how good — and see people look aside, walk quickly past, avoid eye contact.
Those looks, the people hurrying by looking down, the quick glances away, are what members of the Rotary Club of Ridgefield Sunrise have been enduring regularly for a year and a half now. The Rotarians can be found, the first Saturday of each month, standing on sidewalks in town retail areas — in front of Stop & Shop, usually — asking people to give a little cash or do some extra food shopping while in the store and make a donation on their way out.
The Sunrise Rotarians are a Rotary Club that gathers not after work but before work, early in the morning, at 7:15 or 7:30 or some un-meeting-like hour. Ridgefield’s meets Tuesday mornings at the Prospector Theater’s restaurant. Folks who can get up for a Rotary Club meeting at 7-something in the morning — well, they’re probably a pretty dedicated, hard-working bunch.
Are they ever.
After bringing in $7,600 Saturday, following more than $9,200 in February, Sunrise Rotary’s faithful efforts this cold, cold winter have pushed the total they’ve collected, since starting in the fall of 2013, to some $102,000 worth of food.
Very impressive. Rotary passes the donations on to the Ridgefield Food Pantry — it becomes free food, available to folks who need it, through the Social Services Department in Town Hall.
All Ridgefielders — whether they go to town hall and take home some of the food collected, or sometimes stop and make donations to the cause, or look down and walk quickly by when they see the volunteers out on the sidewalk — owe the early-rising Rotarians some heartfelt thanks.
They’re out there doing good, often thankless work. They’re helping folks who need a hand, and making it easier for the rest of us to help as well. They’re making Ridgefield a little less hungry, a little more friendly.
And it seems a safe bet that, if asked how the town’s thanks could best be expressed, the Rotarians might well suggest that people consider leaving some food on the donation table the next time they see the volunteers out on sidewalk collecting food to help hungry neighbors.
Don’t pass them by.