POUGHKEEPSIE — In response to its first food drive in May, the All for One Food Drive-Through Community Effort hosted its second drive-through on North Hamilton Street in the City of Poughkeepsie on Sunday.
As food insecurity continues to be a concern across the country and in the Hudson Valley due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it was imperative for co-organizers Dr. Seema Rizvi and Dr. Rabi Sinha to continue their efforts to deliver healthy food for needy families.
“That’s the most important thing to give them this kind of thing,” said Dr. Rizvi. “I am thankful to the Hispanic community who participated in making the food bags, which is their idea. This is very good from a health point of view.”
Dr. Rizvi estimated that approximately 800 people would show up to collect food donations that were assembled during a four-day gathering effort. During their last event, around 1,300 boxes of donations were collected.
State Senator Sue Serino, a Republican, and Karen Smythe, her Democratic opponent, also made appearances, along with State Assembly candidate Laurette Giordano. Mayor Rob Rolison was at the food drive and said “Fighting food insecurity is a fight everyone needs to get involved in. I thank Dr. Rizvi and Dr. Sinha for their hard work.”
Incumbent Serino praised the efforts of All for One.
“It’s because of the interfaith community, we have a great community that people are helping,” she said.
They each shared their plans for addressing the economic strife left by the pandemic were they to be elected.
“There’s a lot of areas that we can cut, and that we need to cut,” said Serino. “Those are the things that we will be working on and helping small businesses, and not just small businesses, but everybody everywhere.”
“We need to reignite the economy in a way that actually is balanced,” said Smythe, “where everyone has the opportunity to get a job.”
“We need to change the tax code,” said Giordano. “We need to top 10 percent start paying their fair share.”
In addition to the All for One interfaith communities, Dutchess Wingate Nursing Home, Sapphire Nursing Home, Landing Poughkeepsie Assisted Living, Health Quest Internal Medicine Residency Program VBMC and Grey Stone Program were also on hand to support this food donation effort.
Both Drs. Rizvi and Sinha have worked in between the two food drive-throughs to provide bags of groceries, grocery store gift cards and monetary donations to local food banks.
