Muslim Student Association co-sponsors food drive
The Mary Brennan INN soup kitchen in Hempstead hosted a curbside food drive on Saturday, Sept. 25. Several Hofstra students and Nassau County residents volunteered at the event, moving bags and boxes of donations from car trunks to a sorting room inside the building.
Anita Ellis, the director of Commuter Student Services and Community Outreach, co-sponsored the event with the Muslim Student Association (MSA). Ellis said the food drive was part of a series of events at Hofstra leading up to Susan Poser’s presidential inauguration ceremony on Oct. 1.
“This [event] is really kicking off the inaugural week,” Ellis said. “I’m very excited for the turnout.”
Arsalan Jamal, a senior economics and philosophy double major at Hofstra and the president of MSA, was one of the many student volunteers at the event.
“MSA tries to do a lot of volunteer service and community service,” Jamal said. “Once [Ellis] approached us and talked about Mary Brennan and Inauguration Week, we just thought it aligned with what we want to do. We’re so happy to donate our time, donate our effort and just to volunteer and give back to the community.”
The Mary Brennan INN is part of the Interfaith Nutrition Network (INN), a non-profit organization founded in 1983 by a chaplain at Hofstra University. It “provides a broad variety of essential services to assist those challenged by hunger, homelessness and profound poverty,” according to the INN’s website.
It is the largest social service agency of its kind on Long Island, according to Robert Kammerer, a physics professor at Vaughn College in Queens and a board member of the INN.
“It was founded as a group of people who wanted to help their neighbors,” Kammerer said. “They saw their neighbors in need of a meal and they wanted to help so they got together and they opened up a soup kitchen in Hempstead.”
Because the INN has limited full-time staff, volunteers play a critical role during events such as the food drive. Jason Tessler, the donations manager for the INN, worked with the volunteers to unload and move donations.
“Most of the [people here] are volunteers,” Tessler said. “But we take on lots of hats here. Being a manager, I’m active today. I’m not sitting behind my desk. Part of being a manager is that you get involved [by] showing and making sure that everything is done right.”
Melissa Connolly, the Vice President of University Relations at Hofstra, volunteered at the food drive. She also worked to promote the event by sending information about it to various newspapers, nonprofit organizations and hospital systems.
“The INN has long been serving hot meals,” Connolly said. “So really it’s getting the word out that’s important so people know to come here.”
In addition to food drives, community volunteers also play an important role in meal preparation. Junco Kennedy, an employee at the Nassau County Board of Cooperative Educational Services, and Mary Ellen McCabe, a stay-at-home mom, have been volunteering together at the INN for almost seven years. They often work in the kitchen, baking cookies to add to the various meals that go out.
“[The INN] is closed to clients on the weekends so we bake the cookies and put them into these giant vats,” Kennedy said. “Then we cover them and we leave them until Monday afternoon, and they put them out for dessert.”
According to Kammerer, the staff and volunteers have served over 15 million meals and provided emergency shelter to over 170,000 people since the INN first opened.
“The INN not only provides emergency food and shelter, but it’s also important to [the INN] that it does it in a way that preserves the dignity and self-respect of those we help,” Kammerer said. “The INN’s philosophy is: if you need help, just ask.”
