Pet food drive to benefit Easthampton Community Center

EASTHAMPTON — Local groups are coming together to host a pet food drive on Saturday, April 25, to benefit the furry friends of the community.

Organized by the Friends of Easthampton Dog Park, in collaboration with The Heavy Culture Cooperative, the drive will run from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Heavy Culture Cooperative building at 1 Northampton St. and will specifically benefit the Easthampton Community Center.

The drive’s partners are requesting cat litter and pet food for various species. This is the second pet food drive put on for the Easthampton Community Center through this collaboration; the first took place last November.

Easthampton Community Center Executive Director Robin Bialecki told Reminder Publishing the pet food drive came together because the Friends of Easthampton Dog Park and The Heavy Culture Cooperative wanted to find a way to support their community partner. After seeing the success of the pet food drive last November, Bialecki was happy to have the center be the recipient of this effort once again.

“We have a lot of families that come in, and it’s tough enough feeding your family, and then you remember you have to get dog food. It’s hard. It’s not always inexpensive, especially if your dog is on a special diet,” said Bialecki. “We have a lot of seniors that have their comfort pets, and what happens is they’ll give them their food so that they’re eating, but then seniors aren’t getting a dinner, so we try to always make sure that we have a supply of pet food. I said yes [to the drive] because we want to make sure the animals are eating a good, healthy diet, as well as the people that we are serving.”

Friends of the Easthampton Dog Park President Joan Kurtz told Reminder Publishing it was a no-brainer for the group to help support the community center with another pet food drive because of its value to the community.

“We’re supporting the Easthampton Community Center. Besides giving out food to those clients that need it, a lot of them also have pets, so they need dog food, cat food, kitty litter, so we decided to support our local community center,” said Kurtz. “We’re just trying to help the community.”

A former volunteer of the center herself, Kurtz credited Bialecki for her leadership and devoted work to the community. She also highlighted The Heavy Culture Cooperative for its effort in this collaboration and for donating driveway space for pet food items to be dropped off.

“This is a phenomenal city. If there is a call, people will step up and help others,” said Kurtz. “Here’s Heavy Culture Cooperative, who does not benefit in any way, but wants to help. We live in this city, and we want to help all of our neighbors any which way we can.”

Bialecki added that they will accept various dog and cat food brands because different pets have different diets. They are also accepting birdseed, pet dishes, and pet bedding for dogs, cats and pet rodents like hamsters, guinea pigs and gerbils.

For more information on the upcoming pet food drive, visit theheavyculture.coop/shows.

“It is a really big need, and that’s why we keep ourselves as a community center, because we like to think we’re kind of the hub of making sure people get fed, and animals as well,” said Bialecki. “It’s nice to know that other groups are looking after our city, and we like to think that that’s what happens here.”