Wheeler & Taylor Gives to Food Bank of Western Mass

GREAT BARRINGTON, Mass. — Wheeler & Taylor Insurance of Great Barrington and Canary Blomstrom Insurance Agency of Agawam provided support to The Food Bank of Western Massachusetts.

Two rounds of funding will pay for about 100,000 meals for hungry residents of Western Massachusetts. The Food Bank will receive one round of funding now an another in the spring.

"We’re so grateful to Wheeler & Taylor and Canary Blomstrom for their social investment in The Food Bank’s mission to feed our neighbors in need at this critical moment," Executive Director Andrew Morehouse said. "With this support, overall we’ll be able to provide 100,000 meals to households struggling to make ends meet and put healthy food on the table."

Wheeler & Taylor and Canary Blomstrom are members of GoodWorks Financial Group, a network of common-ownership insurance, real estate and financial firms.

"Thanks to The Food Bank, thousands of people in the region are able to get enough to eat every day," Wheeler & Taylor Insurance president J. Scott Rote said. "In this time of unprecedented need, our communities need unprecedented support, and we’re glad to do our part."

With the pandemic, demand for food has grown exponentially. The Food Bank is serving 109,500 people a month in 2020, up 16 percent from 2019. The organization has distributed 11.1 million pounds of food from March through October, a 30 percent increase. It estimates that about one in six residents in the region, including 40,000 children, or one in four, are food-insecure.

"It couldn’t be a worse year, more heartbreaking year, for many folks. I’m glad to know the grants will support food programs in our local area as well as regionally," Sandy Brodeur, president of Canary Blomstrom said.

Based in Hatfield, The Food Bank provides food to hundreds of member food pantries, shelters and meal sites in Western Massachusetts.

Youth Alive & ROPE: Stepping Toward the Future

By Sabrina DammsiBerkshires Staff
10:07AM / Sunday, November 16, 2025

Youth Alive step, dance and drumline participants.

 

PITTSFIELD, Mass. — Every year, the nonprofits Youth Alive and the Rites of Passage and Empowerment step toward a stronger, more equitable community.

 

This year marked Youth Alive's 30th anniversary and ROPE's 15th anniversary. It was no coincidence that the organizations celebrated it with multiple step performances during their fundraising dinner last Saturday at the Berkshire Innovation Center. 

 

"Every step that they took, we knew that they were stepping further away from oppression. They were stepping further away from social injustice," said keynote speaker the Rev. Nakeida Bethel-Smith, pastor of Hood-Shaw Memorial AME Zion Church of Providence, R.I. 

 

"They were stepping further away from all the things that we were told that we couldn't be in the community that was supposed to hug us." 

 

Bethel-Smith is also an eligibility and outreach specialist for the Massachusetts Office for Victim Assistance. 

 

"It was people like Shirley Edgerton, [referred to as Misses E to her students] it was people like the late [Bishop Jerome Edgerton Sr.,]  that saw their potential to step with their purpose, to step boldly into that thing and say, 'we see you, even if nobody else sees you.'

 

"Every time they stepped, they took their authority back. Every time they stepped, they reclaimed their voice. Every time they stepped, you knew that they were stepping with purpose. You knew that they were stepping with a mission.