Helping During The Holidays And Year-Round

As Andy Williams croons in the instantly recognizable holiday tune … “It’s the most wonderful time of the year.”

Looking back over the last couple of months with cold, dark days — it truly is a wonderful time of year. One of the parts I love about working at SPAN is that I am constantly surrounded by people caring for their fellow neighbors. This shows in both big events and ordinary moments and is magnified during these cold winter months.

For Thanksgiving and Christmas, SPAN has a Holiday Caring program that matches sponsors with families to provide food for families and Christmas gifts for children. Many members of the community stepped up to help. Some sponsors were families; others were neighborhoods, businesses or other groups coming together to sponsor a family. Congregations from Woods Memorial Presbyterian, Baldwin United Methodist and Severna Park United Methodist churches together provided items for over 100 children. We, along with our clients, thank all the sponsors immensely. The community helped provide gifts and food to more than 400 children. There were so many big smiles and words of appreciation. As the saying goes, we never know what battles others are fighting. In addition to financial struggles, several clients shared some of their challenges — recent surgeries, health struggles, deaths in the family and helping to care for friends’ children.

The holiday season was full of groups and their members helping SPAN, such as Anytime Fitness, The Masters Club, Chartwell Golf & Country Club, the Round Bay neighborhood, Truist and Anne Arundel Fire Protection.

Another wonderful part of the season was the reverse advent bags from Severna Park United Methodist Church. Instead of taking items out of an advent calendar, the church adds food to the SPAN bags throughout the season. What a welcome sight each week to see all the blue SPAN bags filled with food.

This is the time of year we fill our shelves to last through the quieter months. Our shelves are stocked with donations from the community, and every bag that gets dropped off adds up and contributes to the food that we are able to provide to families.

We are also thankful for the monetary donations that allow us to help people facing evictions, utility turn-offs and medical expenses. The number of requests for emergency financial assistance and the amount SPAN has been helping with have steadily increased over the last year.

One donation that sticks in my mind was on a busy rainy morning right before Christmas. An anonymous woman came to the door to give $200 in cash. Just like with food donations, all the financial donations add up and allow us to help neighbors in need.

It really is a wonderful time of the year as evidenced by all who are there for their fellow community members in so many ways.

“Let our New Year’s resolution be this: We will be there for one another as fellow members of humanity, in the finest sense of the word.”

-Göran Persson - Former prime minister of Sweden

An upcoming opportunity to contribute is with the Good Neighbors Group sixth annual S(o)uper Bowl Food Drive on Super Bowl Sunday. Neighborhoods, get ready for the competition, the challenge and the opportunity to make a big difference for others in the area.

SPAN (Serving People Across Neighborhoods) is an independent nonprofit food pantry and emergency services provider that has been helping local families with eviction prevention, utility turnoffs, medical/prescription bills, and food since 1990. SPAN serves 14 zip codes in Anne Arundel County. SPAN is located behind Our Shepherd Lutheran Church at 400 Benfield Road in Severna Park. Hours are Monday through Thursday from 10:00am-1:30pm. For more information, call 410-647-0889, email spanhelps@yahoo.com or visit www.spanhelps.org. Financial donations may be made through the website. Food donations may be dropped off 24/7 using the storage bin behind SPAN’s building. Please “like” SPAN on Facebook!