seasons greetings everyone and welcome to the fifth annual gifts of hope telephone a joint production between the belmont media center and the belmont citizen harold all to benefit the belmont food pantry again this is our fifth occurrence of it and we're going to be here live for the next five hours to raise funds for the belmont food pantry just a wonderful cause here in town and we're glad to be bringing you this tell thought as we said for the fifth straight year can't believe it's been going on this long but it keeps getting better every year and this year's event i look forward to it every year and it's my fourth year as editor of the balances and howell and this event has grown so much and it's really gotten so much since we started patti is celebrating from the belmont food pantry who we just found out today is the twenty two year anniversary all the belmont food pantry the was started by patti back then and it just keeps it keeps getting better and it's become such a big part of belmont and you you know what they do for us and we get vegetables you know every time they were open we're open you know four times a month the first and third saturday and the second the fourth tuesday right now we've got some entertainment going on in studio way so we're going to kick this off with the piano studio guy i'm here with tom from thirteen nine zero nine antiques at one ninety three belmont str is what i'm doing is i'm donating fifteen percent of my sales from thanksgiving to december thirty first to the food pantry that is really wonderful all sales with that is great well thank you so much and what we'll do is we'll have this and on on on line and people can actually bid on it because yes definitely he can watch the celtics game wearing this so i'm going to send it over to talk and we will be back with another merchant a few minutes and right now we're going to send it right back to patty with another one of our special guests today kate would you tell us a little bit yes powers musical powers music school participated in giving tuesday which follows black friday and cyber monday and it's actually an international day of giving where charities around the world encourage people to give back to their community so this year we had a bake sale and a craft fair and we also had performances from six to eight where students came in and they played and we sold over one hundred fifty eight dollars in individually wrapped cookies and then we received an anonymous match to give to the food pantry so we have a gift of two forty in cash and then we also collected canned goods so i dropped those off this morning many many bags of them and i have one bag here today so on behalf of powers music school here's some cash for the belmont food pantry and we're so glad that we were able to to make a difference in the belmont community so thank you thrilled that we can collaborate on this these two major media organizations and belmont worked working together and none of it would be possible really without the belmont media centers crew and volunteers are fifteen volunteers here today right few helpers here and what they did is they did it few food drive at the tree lighting ceremony on thursday night and here they are presenting the food that we received and actually they also got cash donations martha how much  collected about five hundred fifty six items of food and almost a thousand dollars in cash so that was tremendous it was a great job thank you so much very excited because all of those donations are going to be matched with donations to the foundation for the manage occasioned by hammond so it was a really nice way for people to make one gesture that would have doubled the impact for two great belmont organization so anyone who's picked up our newspaper lately or visit our website that gifts of hope package will go should be familiar to you and most people know what gifts of hope means a one on your screen right now this was why i don't know what it means it's the annual benefit for the belmont food pantry and i'm thrilled that we can collaborate on this these two major media organizations and belmont worked working together and none of it would be possible really without the belmont media centers crew and volunteers are fifteen volunteers here today throughout the day the fifteen first of all in man who is one of our corporate sponsors this year she is a belmont real estate agent so i want to thank ann for her or being a corporate sponsor again we the support that we get from the businesses is is it's definitely tripled this year we have we got a donation from care braga bakery in belmont center they decided to give a flat donation instead of having an event some businesses they have a vents where they give a percentage of the the sales but gave us a very nice donation belmont's savings bank gave us a donation caldwell banker east boston savings bank the belmont dramatic club and the belmont dental ascetics i don't know if anyone has ever heard of them the in belmont center and there are a dentist for everything not just not just ascetics i mean if you need your teeth cleaned you can go there there's also other fundraisers going on today the belmont car wash is having a fundraiser a dollar per car or five dollars per detail also boston today go electric bike it's a new bike store in cushing square it's having a fundraiser ten percent of all sales and rentals and it's not just bikes it's accessories earlier today we had thirty nine zero nine antiques come by he's joining me fifty percent of sales through december thirty first we have another cushing square business on december eleventh on common finds is donating ten percent and that's also the night of the holiday stroll in cushing square which is a very shopping supporting those ten businesses that are given ten percent to have dinner at alpha salyer drink for after so long day parade so december sixteenth and seventeenth she's donating twenty percent of all sales wow  mirage jewelry collection on december nineteenth she's doing fifteen percent of sales if you're looking for unique handmade jewelry that's that's a great place to go and hlne has anyone ever heard of helena's boutique that's this year i'm on the other side yeah now you're just a guest i'm willing to do whatever's necessary well tell us tell us what's happening politically in belmont and how you stay involved well there are a lot of good things happening the  belmont was just designated a green community by the state which is a very good development and  have in their shelves i mean leaked from tuna fish pasta peanut butter and jelly and soups and i guess one of the other things that nobody really thinks about is even a toilet paper towels toilet paper to paste  precious i think one of the most important thing i want to stress when you are preparing for to donate your food items to make sure the dates are checked because if you give us expired food we're going to be going through it maria going to have to do the same thing that you would have done and that's throw it i got here a little while ago and when i showed up i saw my next door neighbors come in had no idea they were coming but it turns out really paul stock and her mother judith arness of paul's stock have both volunteered at the food pantry it doesn't matter how old you are if you have a little bit of energy and you're willing to help bag some food up and help some people we show up we have community service that is required in our public school system but even if it is we still want you to want to do it to come so please help us out an and well a i just learned put made this beautiful picture that in the background here we can switch over to that well they tell us a little bit about it so we wanted to replicate town hall as best we could but we didn't have enough time to do super detail of things so we cut out some construction paper and pieces of  and stuff and tried to do the best we could to use geometric shapes to recreate the town hall thank you guys so much for coming in to joanne from the belmont that if and harold i have with me who came by the studio during a very busy day for her the owner of salon vivian at carrion and vivienne is having a fundraiser december sixteenth and seventeenth to benefit the gifts of ho ball thousand dollars this year and i'm looking full at two thousand dollars so please people i want everyone in beaumont president they can support even a dollar each home they c of each thank you vivian and i really appreciate that you're participating again this year she was one of our most generous donors last year hi guys every once in a while i get a story of somebody who is really really making a difference and trying to change the world i have with me today nate fox who is a fifth grader at the cherry middle school and when he got his community work assigned to him which is only ten hours hey decided to do something really special about ob so proud of nate can you tell us a little bit about your new organization will on doing  oz and so i'm calling it the fox fox and clever my goal is to collect a thousand thoughts to donate to the homeless people of boston the boston health care for the homeless named honey i am so proud of you i love you so much for coming in and doing this thank you for being here with us today and please guys help him meet his goal of a thousand pairs of socks thank you so much we have today special guest host safer zel from our belmont fire department i met him years ago he has done a wonderful job with belmont and he's here to talk about how important it is to donate to the belmont food pantry the food pantry is a great resource for us doesn't matter what time of the year right we'll have families that will have fires or emergencies at their houses be burned out and things like that we often will refer them to the food pantry to get some assistance and during times of need we try to assist the food pantry whenever we can we're now going to segue over to studio warren for pardon me and luis klaas thanks so much everybody enjoy the show am part of the job of the youth commission those of us who are on it was to help sort of facilitate and host tuesday night at the food pantry so that students specifically in the sixth grade could come and get community service  and we could be providing an additional might for the food pantry in those days we only were doing two saturdays a month right so we did that for a number of years one of the best teachers who was involved with that at the channel at the time was j shea who now is dr jeff shea yeah high school and one last year one teacher of the year award massachusetts incredible and he really encouraged his students to come down to the food pantry to to work out to to provide community service and a so we are presenting this first of hopefully many checks that we'll be giving to the belmont food pantry because we do believe in giving back to the community that gives to us so many times in all the homes that we sell in the dreams that we may come true but this hopefully will also help those less fortunate also have some food in their kitchens and we are so happy to be a part of this and thank you joanna for approaching us and we will continue to do this and now steve stock market has done some changes and they've added some things to helping the food pantry can you tell us a little bit about what you've done yes but we just finished up our turkey box campaign and what that was we allow customers com purchase a slip of paper anywhere from five dollars to ten dollars and that money was then collected within the store and the corporate organization as a company we raised over two hundred twenty thousand dollars for needy families which led to both forty two hundred in this locally citizen belmont donated fourteen hundred dollars and i was able to drop off twenty nine did as the night before thanksgiving which helped me be almost in that cam go but we have two two very interesting folks in the studio here today so you've got a really interesting business going out of belmont now so first of all introduce yourselves with working at the food pantry for seven or eight years now when the food pantry used to be open just saturday to saturday mornings we connected with patty just as they were thinking about opening it on week you know helpful and in that case and we agreed the bank agreed to do that so we sponsored some of the recycle trucks that were needed we held it at the old incinerator site and it was our first time doing it there at that location and it was the know that belmont savings has sponsored that and what we did was we asked the residents who came with their recycling to make a donation so we had already taken care of the costs for those trucks so everything that was donated that day which was cash went directly to the food and we didn't mention the five hundred dollars donation from the belmont so the business was association that's correct that you were also involved and so i think that takes care of all of it will thank you very much and i pleasure we'll talk to you s j and paul they're both here for fitness together these two guys are incredible they do a tremendous amount for belmont but they understand that there's a need so we actually we asked our fitness together clients here in beaumont who are always great and charitable to help raise food in monetary donations for the belmont food pantry and they graciously help support we have boxes over here as well we're always happy to get involved and the thing we can do for the community greener is a biblical concept you may some people know this concept through in the bible it's written that farmers are supposed to save the edges of their fields for the poor folks who are then supposed to come on and come out of the fields and take what they could after the main harvest had been hauled in we've had a relationship with the belmont food pantry since two thousand and eleven and in that time  and donated produce first of all let me just say a welcome a huge welcome to c m e baghdadi and his beautiful family this is belmont answer to the kennedys right here live on stage and you guys are great to be here thank you so much i understand you have something for the pantry yes thank you and it's a pleasure to be here it's our third year as a family here and we have smoked from the food for the food we love to do with every year you know well you know you're a terrific family i mean talk about somebody that really walks the walk these are the four of the five captains that have been elected for the twenty fifteen season i mean how great is that voice congratulations it's terrific we are so happy that you're here and i understand you guys all brought food for the pantry that's terrific we're going to talk to you in just a sec about what that means to you all to help out your town but first i'd like to introduce our  was santa claus checking i santa claus pantry and of course as i'm in market basket there's three other belmont residents doing the exact same thing that i write so it's such a great event and such a great cause and to see belmont residents really going all out like