Andrea Farley’s latest delivery of funds for FAITH Food Pantry also marked a temporary pause in an ongoing townwide project.

Farley visited the nondenominational food pantry on August 1, and handed a check for $800 to FFP Vice President Jill LeBlanc. The donation represented the latest turnover of funds raised through the redemption of bottles and cans given to Farley by residents. Farley receives the cans and bottles, turns them in for their redemption, and then delivers all funds to the food pantry.

She handed the latest check off with a bit of an apology. After more than three years of steady fundraising through the bottle and can drive, the project needs a temporary pause.

“I’m so sorry to do this,” Farley told LeBlanc, “but I’ve been having a lot of car trouble. Many people have been nice and giving me rides, but it’s too much to keep asking and having people coordinate around me.”

LeBlanc was very understanding.

“This is incredible,” she told Farley. “We know it’s a lot of work, and we appreciate everything.”

The bottle and can drive was launched in 2020 by then-Nunnawauk Meadows Residents Association (NMRA) President Betty Presnell. In the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, Presnell launched the redemption drive to raise funds to replace what would be lost by the cancellation of the association’s annual fundraiser.

The $2,500 Presnell hoped to raise for NMRA was quickly surpassed, but the donations continued to arrive. Presnell continued her efforts, too — accepting donations of returnable bottles and cans, redeeming them, and then donating every nickel to FAITH Food Pantry and other nonprofits.

The effort led to more than $9,000 being donated to the food pantry, and $500 donations each to American Cancer Society, each of Newtown’s five volunteer fire companies, Newtown Volunteer Ambulance Corps, Families United in Newtown, and Juvenile Diabetes Association, among others.

When Presnell and her family moved out of the area last autumn, Farley took over the project. In May she visited FAITH Food Pantry with a donation of $627.

She fully intends, she told The Newtown Bee, to resume the bottle and can drive when she has her vehicle back on the road.

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Managing Editor Shannon Hicks can be reached at shannon@thebee.com.