PHILIPSBURG, Sint Maarten – Elderly clients of the Home Away from Home Foundation are now receiving their lunches in their own individually marked reusable containers thanks to the donation of 175 food containers to the seniors group by the St. Maarten Tzu Chi Foundation.
Tzu Chi recently donated the food containers to the foundation for the lunch delivery for approximately 90 senior citizens around the country. Each container is individually labelled for each senior. The donation will help to foundation to reduce the amount of waste it creates daily as the reusable containers will replace disposable ones that the foundation had been using.
Home Away from Home Foundation representative Kenneth James Skerritt accepted the 175 lunch boxes on behalf of founder Patricia Flanders. He expressed gratitude to the Tzu Chi Foundation for the generous donation. According to Skerritt, the donation will help to reduce the number of disposable trays that was previously used for food deliveries.
Flanders said using the reusable containers is a step in the right direction for the foundation as it will lower the amount of garbage that is created. It will also save the foundation funds as less will have to be spent to purchase disposable containers. She said the meals prepared for seniors will also be well presented as the food containers has different compartments, where meals can be separated.
Flanders said since the coronavirus COVID-19 the foundation had to come up with a way to get meals to its seniors and the foundation decided to have them delivered to their homes.
One of the seniors thanked Tzu Chi for the donation as it is an effort to help save Mother Earth. He said the foundation had been using a lot of disposable food containers since the COVID-19 crisis, which creates a lot of garbage and this is not good for the earth.
The Home Away from Home Foundation is thankful for the opportunity to show love to Mother Earth.
St. Maarten Tzu Chi Foundation Commissioner Sandra Cheung thanked Flanders for agreeing to help reduce waste in the country by reducing the use of disposable food containers because every little effort helps. This change will also help to reduce the volume of garbage at the dump.
She thanked volunteers for taking time out to label the containers and thanked Home Away from Home Foundation for graciously accepting the donation and for putting it to good use.
