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The food pantry of a Mount Airy nonprofit was awash with screams momentarily on Sunday.
The culprit? A spider sharing the space with roughly 14 teenage girls.
"I like the fact that we're helping a lot of people," said Laurie Johnson, an eighth-grader at New Market Middle School, as she sorted through soup cans looking for dents. The damaged cans might harbor toxins.
Jill Sadowski, a Mount Airy mom who helped supervise the group, said that the activity was a great way for the girls to take food donations a step farther.
"They always bring canned goods, but it's good to see where it goes," Sadowski said.
During the assembly, the group was reminded that the people they are helping are their neighbors.
"It's not only the inner city that is needy," said Dedi Schrider, a member of Mount Airy Baptist and a volunteer at Mount Airy Net, who helped head the project. "It can be right around the corner."
Mount Airy Net has been doing holiday food baskets for years, said the organization's executive director Elaine Dean.
Mount Airy families come and fill out applications to be "adopted," then other community members select applications that they would like to sponsor.
The program is for both Thanksgiving and Christmas. Some sponsors only provide one holiday, and others provide a basket for both. Sponsors include the Lions Club, churches and families.
One church in the area is making up 14 baskets, Dean said.
Dean said there was high interest in helping assemble the baskets, but the Mount Airy Baptist girls had their reservation a year in advance. This is the third year the church has helped assemble the baskets.
"We did it last year as well and we're scheduled to do it next month," Sadowski said.
This past weekend the girls crowded in the pantry room, streaming in and out with boxes and baskets, ranged from sixth grade to seniors in high school, she said.
In the pantry, girls stood crammed against the walls of shelves lined with cans and boxes, standing around a table with lists, baskets, and food.
The few in charge of assembling the baskets yelled out orders: yams, green beans, soup, broth, pie filling… pie filling?
"We're out of pie filling," one said. The group consulted Dean sitting outside at a table, then started filling the baskets with cake mix or tagging dessert-less baskets with a note.
The difference between condensed and evaporated milk had to be explained by mom Sue Veres.
Briana Sadowski, a seventh-grader at Mount Airy Christian Academy, was in charge of stacking the heavy white, food-filled laundry baskets after they were finished. She was with the group when it filled the baskets last year.
"We want to help people around us," she said. "I think it's helpful."
She said the event was one of the "girls only" activities that the church youth do, including a concert.
Libby Veres, a sophomore at Linganore High School, said she had also helped with the event last year. As she grabbed boxes in the pantry and hauled them out to the church kitchen, she said she liked doing it to help others who might not usually have the food.
Haley Schrider, a sophomore at Mount Airy Christian Academy said it seemed right to spend the afternoon like they were.
"We have so much that it's a way to give back to the community," she said.
Even as the girls emptied the shelves in the pantry for the baskets, Dean said the Net would have more food being delivered.
"We'll be getting ready for Christmas so we'll need to restock," she said.
The Christmas baskets are similar to the Thanksgiving ones. "People eat potatoes, green beans and turkey, then turn around and eat it again," Dean said.
At the end of the afternoon, Schrider gathered the girls around the baskets in the kitchen. The group linked hands and prayed over the food, asking for God to bless the families that received it.
"We definitely need continued giving because it gets very low," Dean said. She said Thanksgiving for the group is taken care of, but Christmas is a little bit more demanding monetarily for the group.
"People last year gave me Wal-Mart gift cards and grocery gift cards," she said. "People in the community bring us turkeys."
Dean hopes that the effort continues.
Thanksgiving food baskets will start being delivered Friday.
