GRANBY — While volunteering at a tiny snack pantry for Granby Junior Senior High School students in 2017, Judy DeLong noticed a student wearing a sweatshirt with a wet, wrinkled and frayed collar.

“I asked her, ‘What’s going on?’” DeLong said. “There wasn’t enough food at home. She was chewing her sweatshirt to keep full.”

That moment was DeLong’s wake up call. Even with free breakfast and lunches, the snacks she supplied students wasn’t enough for food insecure families. She called her friend and mentor Mary Lou Guarnera, executive director of South Hadley food pantry Neighbors Helping Neighbors, and devised a plan to pack backpacks full of pantry staples in a small school closet and delivery them to hungry students.

“There are many kids that will come to school not having had dinner the night before, not having had breakfast, and their main food comes from the free breakfast to lunch, which is not an adequate amount of calories,” Guarnera said. “The kids who don’t get food are not going to be able to play sports or study.”

Eight years later, DeLong, Guarnera and a team of volunteers have grown the small pantry closet into Granby To Go, a vital service for students, offering food, clothing, sanitary products and school supplies for children and their families. With over 600 visits per month, Granby To Go, DeLong said, brings dignity to students whose family income cannot keep pace with rising costs of essential goods.

“There is a stigma about food insecurity, and people thought it could never be in Granby,” DeLong said. “What we try to do is break down that stigma. We try to invite people in here on Tuesday nights, and when they come in, they’re in shock.”

Jennifer Rolland-DeWitt witnesses the surprises of first time visitors each week. She’s volunteered with Granby To Go since the program started, harnessing her organization skills to pack student backpacks and sort through donated clothing. Now, she sits on the board for the nonprofit.

Not only does Rolland-DeWitt enjoy giving back to her community, she said, but she’s learned more about her neighbors and fellow Granby residents as a result of her work. She even uses food from the pantry, making meals from excess canned goods after a long night of packing.

“It’s open to anybody, it doesn’t have to be the food insecure,” Rolland-DeWit said. “Just because there might be a stigma in the community, doesn’t mean we have that. If you need a coat, take a coat, if the boots fit you, then take them. And then we have more donations coming in.”

Granby To Go opens its doors to community members on Tuesday evenings from 6 to 7:30, where families can pick up larger orders of food and shop the selection of clothing.

When DeLong realized that some families could not afford weather-appropriate attire after she saw a student come to school in flip-flops on a cold, snowy day, she called her husband and ordered him to deliver every pair of unworn shoes to the school. The clothing collection grew from there.

“Several families that come in that are well in need of clothes or have babies and they don’t have anything,” Stacy Nawrocki, a mother involved with Granby To Go said. “I have tons of clothes and her boss’s kids clothes are in great shape and I bring those in all the time. It makes me feel like I make a good impact by donating.”

As a mother of two young kids, Nawrocki’s 6-year-old son began receiving Granby To Go backpacks as a way to offset the rising cost of food. The service has ensured the young family never runs out of canned goods and meats, Nawrocki said, and the Bombas socks she picks up are high quality.

Rolland-DeWit and Nawrocki credit DeLong’s passion as the glue of the program, cheering on volunteers and filling the needs of any resident without judgment. She washes clothes for students without access to a washer and dyer, then carefully folds it in a duffle bag for them to discretely pick up. She searches for blankets on request, finds Halloween costumes and offers prom dresses. When visiting the food bank, she picks up microwavable goods for families in shelters and motels.

But DeLong credits the students as the program’s key to success.

“When kids see that it’s themselves or their friends who are going hungry, they’re more apt to help, there’s no bully and also they come back even after they graduate,” she said.

Often, students bring along their friends to pick up food together. Students in special education classrooms deliver backpacks to East Meadow School on Thursdays, which gets them out of the classroom and simulates workplace tasks.

“It’s like a win-win, because then my kids are learning about bagging orders, or delivering them over to another school,” special education teacher Tia Potwardowski said. “The interactions that they have with other staff and other students helps to hone in on those vocational skills.”

On days Granby To Go is closed, DeLong will refer visitors to Neighbors Helping Neighbors, which offers a wider variety of produce and meats on Wednesdays and Saturdays. The partnership goes both ways. When Guarnera found a large surplus of children’s winter coats, she brought them to Granby To Go, and when DeLong learned Granby’s Council on Aging had excess produce, she informed Guarnera on where to pick it up.

“Everybody involved is doing it from their heart,” Guarnera said. “They’re not doing it because they need hours or because they are bored. They’re doing it because they want to be there to help people, and it’s amazing to see.”

Emilee Klein can be reached at eklein@gazettenet.com.