November Newsletter

Welcome to the TAPTF Society’s November Newsletter. All the ghosts and goblins have gone to bed and we wake up to the Season of Giving. November 11th is Veterans Day, November 15th is National Philanthropy Day, and Giving Tuesday is on November 28th this year, just to remind you that the Giving Season isn’t just for Thanksgiving. 
In the month of October, we received $6,447 worth of contributions, combined with our donations of $8,176, bringing the total to an incredible 1,156 meals delivered this month. Thank you to all of our volunteers and donors, we appreciate your hard work every day and we could not do it without you.

Let’s all work together to make this Season of Giving our warmest one yet.

Great News for the Milton Food Pantry

On October 11th, our partners at the Milton Food Pantry cut the ribbon on their fabulous new warehouse and refrigerated storage facility. “Sustainability is always a concern for nonprofits, and the pantry is no different,” said President Donna Murawski. “At the pantry, there was little to no storage. Rescued food was often lost due to lack of refrigeration. A tremendous amount of time and work effort was required to set up and break down distributions each month. Consider all of these factors along with a 50% increase in families served in 2023. The need for a property of our own with a building dedicated to the storage, packing and distribution of food was crucial.”

Lack of access to refrigeration is a major cause of food waste. Donations of fruits and vegetables to the Milton Food Pantry will now stay fresher for longer allowing the pantry to serve the growing need they see in our community and provide greater access to better nutritional choices for local families. We are so happy for them and we look forward to helping them support this beautiful new space.

Read all about it HERE

The Nanticoke Indian Association Inc. will present Native American Day
11 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. 
Saturday, Nov. 4,
at the Nanticoke Indian Museum,
26673 John J. Williams Highway, Millsboro.

The featured speaker will be Drew Shuptar-Rayvis, Maryland state archivist and Algonkian living historian.

Attractions include museum tours; performances of traditional dance, drumming and singing; native storytelling and flute music; and vendors offering Native American foods, crafts and merchandise. Donations will be accepted on site for the Nanticoke Indian Association.

For details, email museum@NanticokeIndians.org, call 302-945-7022 or go to NanticokeIndians.org

Meet the SeaTwirl. The SeaTwirl is a new type of Vertical Access Wind Turbine or VAWTs, which rotate on an upright axis as opposed to the horizontal ones we typically see. Their design offers several advantages: they’re smaller so they can be deployed in deeper waters where regular turbines would be prohibitively expensive, they can catch wind from any direction which enhances their performance, and they float, meaning they are much more customizable to the space and conditions that may be needed. Excellent news for the future of green technologies and the reduction of our reliance on fossil fuels.

Read all about the SeaTwirl and other green technologies at HappyEcoNews.com

Sustaining Sussex Through Education:
The Next Step

In October of 2020, we started with a simple mission: to reduce food waste by rescuing imperfect produce and to address the food insecurity that our community was experiencing due to the COVID-19 pandemic by preparing fresh and healthy meals for our struggling neighbors, growing from about 250 meals delivered in our first month to around 2,500 in the month of September 2023. We built and maintained an impressive number of community garden plots which supplement our meals with fresh produce, and we logged countless hours over boiling pots and simmering stoves. But as the pandemic continued on and on, in the back of our minds we had a larger vision, one that we have been working towards refining ever since we began.

One of the long-term goals of the TAPTF Society is to promote
sustainability awareness through robust community outreach programs, and by
constructing a Sustainability Education Center (SEC) and Eco-village Intentional Community where we can develop programs to educate the community on a variety of sustainability topics, provide training for the future of green jobs, inspire the next generation of farmers, and maintain a community accessible kitchen where we will provide access to meal preparation areas, cooking lessons, career training and nutritional information. A place where we can all gather, learn about new technologies, and get to work on a gameplan that will help us as a coastal community fight the very real effects of climate change. In addition to the SEC, we envision a collection of small private homes with shared communal spaces that produce the least possible negative impact on the natural environment through intentional physical design as well as intentional utility choices. We want these homes to be an example to others that the green way of life is not only possible, but preferable.

We are currently doing our best to make this next chapter of our organization a reality. But living intentionally requires teamwork! So, we are expanding our call to action. If you or someone you know, is a teacher, a contractor, a scientist, a home chef, a gardener, a young person looking for community service opportunities, or just a person with a big heart, we want to meet you and hear your ideas! We are happy to train or teach anyone and everyone with all levels of ability, there is always something to do and many hands make light work.

Teamwork makes the dream work and this dream is definitely one worth the work.

“I’m not telling you it’s going to be easy.
I’m telling you it’s going to be worth it.” – Art Williams

If you would like to volunteer with the Teach A Person To Fish Society simply reply to this email or visit our Volunteer Opportunities page on our website. Don’t forget all monetary donations are tax deductible.