An Avon-based food bank that provides hundreds of people in New England with discounted food in exchange for community service has stopped delivering food, and local chapters have been saddled with its debt.
Serve New England Inc. is run primarily by volunteers who distribute food packages monthly at local churches, veterans halls and councils on aging. Typically people receive $50 worth of food in exchange for $25 and two hours of community service.
Now local chapters are trying to pick up the pieces. On Thursday, more than two dozen people met with Attorney Adam Bond to figure out what to do. Read the rest of the story at PatriotLedger.com.
An update to this story was published on SouthCoastToday.com on August 25, 2010.
SERVE New England,as written, was a great food service. It slowly declined for 2-3 years and nose dived the last 6 months. Ten months of questiosn and requests were ignored or “excused.” Chapters were told a wide variety of reasons for missing or replaced food. In hindsight, spoken words were outright lies,it was the beginning of a rapid downfall. The writing was on the wall but few saw could see. We were disillusioned and tricked. I have no doubt who pocketed the monies, thousands and thousands of dollars. How sad.
I was a member for 6yrs and a co-ordinator for 1yr. I found this service was extremely helpful to me, we are now really feeling it. Without the food package we are not able to eat as well, especially fruit and vegatables.
I thought the prices were OUTRAGEOUS! I looked at the site several times while poor and hungry and knew I could do better at Market Basket. I can’t see how truly poor people ever used this service. It was more for people with money…seniors.
I was a volunteer with Serve New England from the beginning, when it was known as Share New England. While it was Share New England and the 1st few years of it being known as Serve New England, it was an outstanding organization. Prices WERE far lower than the supermarkets and the quality was very good. Since around 2006-2007, prices began to creep up and the quality was beginning that downward spiral. It all came apart once Serve New England got involved with some Christian preacher. The entire organization changed – rather than being non-sectarian, welcoming everyone, it began to get preachy, holding prayer services. This is NOT what it was supposed to be about. My family and I discontinued our involvement around 2007 – too many “funny” things going on and Ann Adams quit returning people’s phone calls/emails…then the website went down… Now we all know it was a smokescreen for robbing from the very people who needed the service the most. How sad.