GRANBY –  Granby to Go is working to help families and residents in need during the coronavirus pandemic.

Judy DeLong, who lives in New York, makes the drive to Granby and volunteers with the program. She said she first became involved with the program because her daughter works as a nurse in a school in town. She said her daughter and other nurses “noticed in clinics, kids were hungry for more and more snacks.”

“My daughter asked me to volunteer, I saw the need for it and was hooked,” she said.

The backpack program, which she said, “feeds kids and feeds siblings too,” began in a closet at the junior high school and led to taking over an entire room. “It went from a closet to a 1,500 square foot space in the Junior Senior High School,” she said. “The program was phenomenal until COVID, they had to close the schools.”

The volunteers, she said, have worked hard throughout the pandemic to continually make sure families in need are fed throughout the closure of schools. The work, she said, began by “talking to families, making sure they would go down and making sure they don’t feel insecure.”

The group, she explained, would host socially distanced meal pickups. “My husband would drive me down there, when I go down I go in an area, I stand-in an area where I’m confined and not interacting,” she said. From there, numbers are placed on windshields and forms are filled out. Once that is done, she said, “they pop their trunk and [the food is] loaded into them.”

It’s not just the families with school-aged children that are utilizing the program, though. “A lot of families are utilizing it, but it’s not just families with kids, it’s the elderly,” she said.

DeLong said those interested in helping should “check in with the pantries locally, monthly to see what they need.” However, she recommended donating hot foods such as “hot cereal, soups, and pastas.”

She said for anyone interested in donating their time as a volunteer, food or monetarily should contact Neighbors Helping Neighbors, which serves both South Hadley and Granby, by calling 437-7593, on their Facebook page or their website https://www.nhnfoodpantry.org.