Just in time for Thanksgiving, St. Philip’s Episcopal Church in Dyker heights conducted a food drive for the Bay Ridge Center food pantry – a bigtime collection that amounted to over 300 pounds of non-perishable food (pet food included), delivered to the center, whose mission – since 1976 – has been to provide services and programs for adults 60 years and older in southwest Brooklyn.

“It was conducted by the Episcopal Church Women (ECW) and we do a number of charitable things during the course of the year and this was a canned food drive,” said Dianne Malone, junior warden with St. Philip’s Episcopal Church. “The drive included non-perishable foods for the Bay Ridge Senior Center (BRSC) food pantry which we coordinated with Todd Fliedner of BRSC and we also had a number of organization work with us including the Dyker Civic Association.

“We also had several community sponsors,” she continued, “which included pet stores and other things in the neighborhoods.”

According to Malone, local pet stores allowed St. Philip’s volunteers to place collection boxes inside their stores.

“A lot of the seniors find it difficult to [buy pet food] and they share the meals that they get from the center with their pets,” explained Malone. “One of our members decided to take on this side collection and she went out to the various pet stores and various pet locations in Bay Ridge and we decorated boxes and their customers and the stores donated pet food and snacks for the pets.”

Overall, Malone said the collection was a huge success.

“We had tons of food coming out of the trunk of my car,” said Malone. “I can’t say enough about Todd’s group. They distribute [so many of] these meals on wheels, they have social workers there and they do so much with just volunteer help.”