Good afternoon friends of Care and Share!

Last year, Care and Share received a generous grant from the Daniels Fund to build a clean room at our Colorado Springs distribution center. This new addition will allow Care and Share to purchase foods like pasta and cereal in bulk, which usually costs less, and repackage those foods through the help of our wonderful volunteers into smaller packages for our pantries to give to the families they serve.

The clean room is also a giant cooler. The temperature can go down to 45 degrees so we will be able to package frozen food, like bulk fruits and veggies.

We are working on the final phase of the clean room build-out. The room has to meet high food safety standards, so it will be completely sealed off from the rest of the distribution center to ensure that the food is sanitary. Clean room volunteers will be properly trained and wear hairnets, aprons, and clean clothing to help safely process and repackage food.

We’re almost ready to start packing, and we just received our first shipment of bulk food – 5,300 pounds of pasta! In the next few weeks, we’ll be training volunteers and adding the final touches to the clean room so we can test out our repackaging skills and send all of that amazing pasta to our food pantries across Southern Colorado to help fill our hungry neighbors’ empty stomachs. We are excited to have one more way to get more food to more people in more places.

Thanks for reading and have a great day!