$1000 went to Golisano’s Children Hospital

$2600 went to-Make a Wish, CF Foundation, Stepping Stones, Alle Shea Project, Juvenile Diabetes’s, Ronald McDonald House and Special Olympics

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2012 Newsletter

THANK YOU!

From left, Ryan Bellavia, 11, of Webster; Kyle Remis, 20, of Ontario; Sean Burke, 21, of Fairport; and Tommy Godsey, 20, of Williamson work with Creative Themes Day Camp to stock area food pantries. / Marie De Jesus/staff photographer

Local day camp gives back by donating to area food pantries

After a hearty treat of hot chocolate and doughnuts, a half-dozen volunteers from Creative Themes Day Camp lugged boxes of food and personal hygiene items from the loading dock of the Wegmans store in Penfield into waiting minivans and cars Saturday morning.

Once the cars were loaded, the volunteers fanned out to take the items to five food pantries throughout eastern Monroe County, where they’ll be donated to people in need. Denise Bellavia, director of Creative Themes, said the effort — the first of its kind for her family-run business — won’t be the last.
She and her father, Robert Remis, who own the camp, plan to challenge other area businesses to join the effort. “This is not going to be a one-time thing,” she said. “We want to make a connection with these places to continue this during the year.”

Creative Themes, a summer day camp for kids that straddles the line between Perinton and East Rochester, is in its 29th year. To celebrate, the camp decided to use money from camper registrations to give back to community organizations.

“We put $5 for each camper into a kitty and decided to find different ways in the community to help,” Bellavia said. She and Remis settled on food pantries — in part because Remis has volunteered at a pantry, and in part because last summer the camp put together a spur-of-the-moment food drive for the Brighton Food Cupboard.

“We know that in the suburbs, the food pantries are one of the things that don’t get as much publicity,” Bellavia said. “People think that people in the suburbs have money. But we know that there are a lot of poor people living in the suburbs.”

After consulting with food pantries, she purchased a total of $1,900 worth of nine different items: canned soup, pasta, sauce, canned fruit, laundry detergent, facial tissue, toilet paper, soap and shampoo.
Those items are important stopgaps for supplies that have been depleted by heavy demand, said Margery Morgan, co-director of Hope Ministry of Webster, one of the pantries to receive the donations. The others were pantries in Fairport, Pittsford, Brighton and Penfield.

Morgan, whose pantry is run by Holy Trinity Church and is supported by the Webster-Penfield Catholic Connection and other organizations, said the faltering economy has reached out past the city line.
“What people do not realize is that the poverty rate is rising faster in the suburbs,” Morgan said. “People assume it’s an inner-city issue and it’s not. It’s just not as obvious.”

Indeed, a Brookings Institution report released in November showed that the number of people living below the poverty line in Monroe County’s suburbs rose 40 percent from 2000 to 2009, compared with an increase of 6 percent in the city of Rochester.

The loading, delivery and unloading of the donated goods was performed by counselors of Creative Themes who got together at Bellavia’s request. Most of the counselors are high school and college students who started as campers when they were young.

One who would have been there is Kyle Schuhart, a senior at Penfield High School. But because he was tied up at an event with the school’s robotics team Saturday, his mother, Tammy Schuhart, filled in for him. Kyle, who has cystic fibrosis, has attended the camp since he was 5. In every year he has attended, the camp has sponsored him and his family in fundraising activities through the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation of Rochester, his mother said.

“Creative Themes has already done a lot for us and for the community, and the people here are very dear to our hearts,” Schuhart said.

MZEIGLER@DemocratandChronicle.com