Our story starts in a small town, a 7 year old boy named Shane and 1 question... Does hunger happen in our town?
When Shane heard the answer was yes, hunger does happen in our town, he wanted to change that.
When his first idea didn't quite pan out, we couldn't just take everyone to Grandma's house to eat for the upcoming Thanksgiving Holiday to feed those that were hungry, Shane took another route he contacted his local church and town food pantry. Given a number of baskets in need Shane put out a call to his town, to help anyone by making a donation. No donation too small. This is where Shane Gives Thanks journey began. Shane was able to collect enough supplies (Turkey, all the fixings, desserts and items for the days following the holiday) for a total of 68 boxes distributed to his community his first year. Shane packed the boxes in his living room and distributed delivered the boxes to the desired location.
Year to date Shane has filled over 244 holiday boxes for Thanksgiving, purely on donation.
As Shane returned back to school in the fall, many of his peers spoke about the holiday, Shane noticed many did not, many when time for lunch would gobble it up, and peers would make comments that once school is out, especially on the weekend there is no food to eat at their houses.
That made Shane think, do they go without? Because no one should go without. With the help of his special needs little sister, the Peyton Pack program began. The Peyton Pack program provides Students in our school system a pack of food for the weekend. Each bag is distributed the last day of the school week for the weekend. Each bag contains kid friendly food with easy open tops, containing 2 breakfast items. 2 lunch items 10 snacks, juice/shelf stable milk, fruit and vegetable options. This program operates on donation and in 2 years that this program has operated Shane Gives Thanks has handed out more than 15,000 meals to students.
In the fall of 2016 Shane Gives Thanks was offered an amazing opportunity, our town was going to close their food pantry. Knowing that closing a food pantry would devastate those who truly need it, Shane asked the simple question.. Can his charity take it over? When the town voted yes, Shane began his new journey of a food pantry with the understanding that the charity itself now would have to sustain its own.
Shane was blessed to have an anonymous donation come in to cover his first year of rent at our current unit, and has sustained itself and all of the programs on donations. Shane also wanted a full charity, meaning all those who work for his mission are volunteers and no one receives a pay check. Shane Gives Thanks Food Pantry opened its doors in the winter of 2016 serving just 50 people, now in the summer of 2018 Shane Gives Thanks food pantry serves over 600 guests. Now 11, Shane can be found doing what he loves often helping and greeting guests at the pantry.
Our pantry is open 4 days a week serving 6 towns, where guests can utilize our services every 7 days. Our food pantry offers a Veteran's food pantry the last Sunday of every month, Home delivery to shut ins, and Sunday hours for working families.
Our small 800 square foot location is becoming just that small. Our programs are expanding, by leaps and bounds, but our space is not. Shane Gives Thanks is in need of a bigger rental unit.
With expanding our programs, expands our services to more communities that are in need.
Part of Shane's expansion plan is to have a space big enough to not only have our programs run more efficiently, open our services to more towns, and to open a soup kitchen to be able to offer lunches or warm meals to those who may be struggling including our senior community.
Every dollar counts, and can make a difference in a person's life by clicking donate/
