Re-opening Wellspring in Rainelle

We are writing this newsletter with a lot of joy!

On Tuesday, September 30th we re-opened our Food Pantry program in our new location in Rainelle. This was also our transition to a choice-model food pantry, in which our neighbors walk through our aisles and choose the groceries their family needs.

In addition we have since offered a second pantry on October 14th, also to great success! Both times we served over 300 neighbors with fresh fruit & produce, bread, frozen meat, nonperishable food and hygiene items.

SO many community members helped us get to a point where offering a food pantry in our new (still very much under construction) space was possible. We have continued to rely on our AMAZING volunteer community - these folks show up again and again to offer their time, skills and heart.

As a small staff of three, we truly could not offer ANY of our programs without our volunteers. Our volunteers are also really fun, interesting people, and we love seeing connections and friendships build among them!

We are also truly blessed to have such a supportive donor community at Wellspring! A hygiene drive organized by members of the Gals Social Connection, led by Dana Hanekamp and members of the Greenbrier Sporting Club, was so successful that we were able to offer hygiene and cleaning items to our first two pantries without running out of essentials like paper towels, toilet paper and laundry detergent. For us, this is an enormous win!!

We are also enormously grateful to our wider community connections and support in Greenbrier County. Below you will see our meat freezer, stocked with meat purchased from Mountaineer Food Bank and some amazing ground beef donated by Swift Level Fine Meats.

We are proud to be increasing our commitment to partner with local farms. Below is one week of vegetables for our food pantry purchased from Ben’s Salad Bowl in Crawley. Ben has also donated 50lbs of lettuce to our food pantry twice each month this fall!

Another big success from the fall was our Health & Resource Fair this week! We hosted 26 local social service organizations, including resources for babies up through elders. Greenbrier County Health Department offered flu vaccinations and WVU Tech Nursing School students helped at various wellness checks!

Multiple social service organizations from all over our region offered useful connections and valuable information to our community.

Our Meadow River Valley community is often disconnected from some of the resources that could be helpful to them due to distance and other barriers, and we are excited to begin offering this yearly health fair in our new home of Rainelle!

Stay tuned for more updates from Wellspring as we continue to re-open our programming and make community connections in Rainelle!!

We are also grateful to our funders, who continue to support us:

·    The Daywood Foundation

·    Hollowell Dawkins Foundation

·    James F.B. Peyton Family Fund

·    United Way of Greenbrier Valley

·    Darrell K. Cales Trust

·    Seneca Trail Charitable Foundation

·    The Jeanne G. Hamilton & Lawson W. Hamilton, Jr. Family Foundation

·    WVU Foundation

·    The Lewisburg Rotary Foundation & Rotary International Foundation

·    Meadow River Valley Rotary Club

·    Mary B. Nickell Foundation

·    & many more individual and community donors!