The two residents saw a need in the community to aid families, pets in times of need.
By KRYSTAL NURSE
The Sun
For their Silver Awards, freshmen and second-year Cadet Girl Scouts Ella Bonaventure, Paul VI High School, and Kaitlyn Toppin, Clearview Regional High School, started the All Paws Pet Pantry to help families about to be forced to surrender their pets due to a rough patch in the families’ lives.
The pantry received its start through the girls’ love for animals, as they assisted Toppin’s mom, Stacie, at the Gloucester County and South Jersey Regional animal shelters and wanted to help in some way.
The Mantua residents have donation boxes set up at the Mantua PetSmart, Daminger’s Natural Pet Foods and PetValu in Mullica Hill to collect pet food, toys, beds and over-the-counter medicine for local families in need. When notified of a full bin, the girls, with the help of their families, pick up and deliver the items to Your Place at the Table, YPATT, inside of Trinity United Methodist Church in Mullica Hill.
“They take in donations and give out food twice a month, but they didn’t do any pet food,” said Toppin. “And we were like ‘why don’t we add on to it because people have pets too?’”
While they don’t have an exact number items they’ve collected, they’ve made five trips to PetSmart since setting up a bin around Oct. 27 and have gathered “three pet beds and a lot of cat food and dog food.”
Once in possession of YPATT volunteers, the donations are weighed and set aside until the church welcomes in the next round of families to collect items.
Some of the more unique items collected were dog treats shaped as Halloween cookies, which they both remarked were cute and interesting to receive.
The girls do not know of the status of their Silver Award, but they hope to receive it. Girl Scouts, they said, requires a minimum of 50 hours committed to the project to be considered for the award. Previously, they had benches installed at VFW Post 7679 for their Bronze Award.
Both have high hopes of continuing the pantry after the award because they witnessed how much it meant to families in need.
“It made me feel really happy to help people because I don’t really know how it feels to go through a rough time, but I wouldn’t want to lose my pet,” said Bonaventure.
“It’s not based on how much money you make or anything,” said Toppin. “Anybody can come get food if they need it.”
Kristin Skronbanek of YPATT recently took a survey, they said, of the people who walked in and out during one of the organization’s drives to find out what kind of pets they have and what the families need the most. The pair hopes to use the results to put out calls for more donations through their moms’ social media accounts and fliers.
The 14-year-olds hope to extend the drive into their respective high schools after seeing the success of similar projects by clubs and to get the younger Scouts involved as they get busier with school and sports.
“This project was just like us wondering how many people were actually going to help, and it was nice to see that it worked and people are donating,” said Toppin. “It’s relieving that it’s working.”
