02/18/2026
To our donors and the Town of Stafford,
I’ve been told that once you’ve made your point stop talking and that same rule applies to writing letters. Personally, I have rarely run short on words so I will try to keep this letter as short as possible.
In October of 2025, our agency was made aware that SNAP funds were being withheld by the federal government. CT Food Share set up a Zoom call to all food cupboards, pantries, soup kitchens and other agencies providing food to let us know how we’d be affected.
Soon after, I met with our First Selectman, Bill Morrison and Yana Abramovich from the Town of Stafford at their request. They wanted to discuss the impact on the SNAP recipients scraping by on their existing benefits and how the shortages that CT Food Share was experiencing would adversely affect Safe Net’s ability to serve. We anticipated an increase in families and would need to use retail sources to purchase necessary food which would increase our costs. In order to offset these factors, the First Selectman instructed the finance department to issue Safe Net a check to assure that we’d be able to accommodate both of those issues.
We also put the word out to our past donors through our church groups, public schools, areas businesses and clubs, volunteer organizations, etc. Then we waited, but not for long. How the town and donors reacted defied explanation. With Thanksgiving approaching we put out our needs list which included turkeys and Thanksgiving staples. The folks in Stafford and surrounding communities opened their hearts and wallets to provide us with enough food to feed over 200 families for Thanksgiving, in addition to panty staples for day-to-day operations. This allowed us to continue and expand our operations without any interruption. To thank you all here would be impossible as your generosity was enormous. The surplus of words I claimed to have earlier would still not explain the enormity of your unselfishness.
In closing, I’d also like to point out the tremendous outpouring of assistance that we received in man hours. Also, the many, many contributions made anonymously from folks that sent us financial assistance by checks, Venmo and those that dropped off cash during our increased ‘office hours’. I was approached by people that I didn’t know that handed over cash and checks repeatedly during that month. Even now we receive donations to assist us in fighting food insecurity. Our volunteers, the heart and soul of Safe Net and I were overwhelmed by your generosity and kindness. Thank you.
Most sincerely,
Andrea Lorenzetti
President, Safe Net Ministries
