Inspired by both the tireless generosity of volunteer superhero Polly Nichols and my love of alliteration, I’m launching a new opportunity for my home music studio: Polly’s Pantry Partners.

Many of you surely know Polly already, whether from her work helping to found the Coralville Ecumenical Food Pantry, from her joyful and loving presence at New Song Episocopal Church, in her professional capacity as a psychologist or in any number of other ways Polly has been blessing our community for decades.

The basket pictured above sits in my entryway. I invite you to bring a non-perishable food donation to your lesson any given week and I will deliver to the pantry each time the basket fills to capacity. You’re welcome to participate in any way that you wish: every week, once a month, or not at all. A jar of peanut butter every once in a while might not seem like a big deal but that’s one more jar of peanut butter gracing a pantry shelf than there was before. There’s no effort too small to make a difference.

As the far more eloquent cultural anthropologist Margeret Mead famously said: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”