BERKS COUNTY, Pa. – It’s “National Pennsylvania Day,” and this year, many in the Commonwealth are celebrating by giving back.<\/p>\n
The theme for Pa. Day this year is ‘Pennsylvanians Helping Pennsylvanians’ through acts of service, focusing primarily on food insecurity.<\/p>\n
Several volunteers celebrated today by pitching in at the Helping Harvest Community Kitchen in Reading.<\/p>\n
“For us, it’s really a day to celebrate volunteerism, which is something we rely on so much at the food bank,” says Jay Worrall, president of Helping Harvest Fresh Food Bank.<\/p>\n
“We may use more than 100 volunteers in a single day just with our food bank [and] all of the partners that we distribute food to; they all rely on volunteers also,” Worrall added.<\/p>\n
State Senator Judy Schwank, who helped at the food bank warehouse in Spring Township, says it’s important to get a firsthand perspective.<\/p>\n
“I’m a member of the Hunger Caucus, so twice a year we gather to talk about how we can help support food insecurity for folks throughout the Commonwealth,’ says Schwank.<\/p>\n
“It helps to actually do the job, rather than standing in front of a microphone. Actually, see what needs to be done to make sure people can get fed,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Additionally, the Heritage at Green Hills in Cumru Township hosted a collection drive.<\/p>\n
“It’s fun,” says Kathie Holm, a member of Green Hills Heritage Resident Benefit Council. “It brings us together as a community while helping the greater community,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Several bags of items, including clothes, shoes, toiletries, and food were collected at the Heritage to donate to organizations throughout the county.<\/p>\n
“It does us good as senior citizens that we give back,” says a resident dressed as the female version of ‘Uncle Sam’.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BERKS COUNTY, Pa. – It’s “National Pennsylvania Day,” and this year, many in the Commonwealth are celebrating by…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":248033,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[5705,105980,524,15868,5706,7301,14459,31980,105979,128,130,129,4345],"class_list":["post-248032","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-reading","tag-charity","tag-collection-drive","tag-community","tag-donation","tag-food-bank","tag-food-insecurity","tag-giving-back","tag-helping-harvest","tag-pennsylvania-day","tag-reading-city","tag-reading-city-headlines","tag-reading-city-news","tag-volunteers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248032","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=248032"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248032\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/248033"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=248032"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=248032"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=248032"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}