25th annual event honors Bethpage Federal Credit Union
Island Harvest Food Bank’s 25th annual Taste of the Harvest Celebration, presented by Petro Home Services, will be held on Tuesday, Oct. 16, at 6 p.m., at Crest Hollow Country Club, 8325 Jericho Tpke., Woodbury. Longtime Island Harvest Food Bank supporter Bethpage Federal Credit Union is this year’s honoree, along with Alec Armyn, who will receive the 2018 Student Ambassador Award in recognition of his hunger relief efforts in his community.
Emceeing the highly popular and much-anticipated event will be Emmy Award-winning Pei-Sze Cheng, a member of NBC 4 New York’s investigative unit, the I-Team. Neil Foster and Ryan Alovis, who launched Foodie Card earlier this year, are serving as co-chairs of the 25th Annual Taste of the Harvest Celebration.
The Taste of the Harvest Celebration is not your average fundraising dinner. It’s a gourmet tasting event that features a variety of scrumptious food and desserts from more than 40 of Long Island’s top restaurants, caterers, country clubs and other fine eateries. Guests enjoy a memorable evening of sampling an array of gourmet food and desserts—all to help raise much-needed funds to enable Island Harvest Food Bank to continue to provide food and related support services to approximately 300,000 food-insecure Long Islanders. The Taste of the Harvest Celebration also features an exciting raffle and a silent auction with prizes that include New York sports memorabilia, weekend getaways, restaurant gift certificates, and much more.
For more than 75 years, Bethpage has been committed to enriching the lives of its members, employees and the communities it serves.
For more than 10 years, Bethpage has partnered with Island Harvest Food Bank in supporting the Annual Turkey & Trimmings Campaign, Kids Weekend Backpack Feeding Program and Taste of the Harvest Celebration. In 2008, to further support the Turkey and Trimmings Campaign, Bethpage began the Annual Turkey Drive which quickly became the largest drive of its kind on Long Island collecting turkeys and food to support thousands of families. Since its inception, the event has collected more than 30,000 turkeys and more than 109,000 pounds of nonperishable food to help Long Island families facing hardship during the holidays.
Alec Armyn is passionate about giving back to the community and has been since elementary school. Now a senior at Half Hollow Hills High School East, he always chose to participate in toy, food and clothing drives at school. However, he did not truly understand how much need there was on Long Island until he heard Randi Shubin Dresner of Island Harvest Food Bank talk about how many families go hungry because they were forced to choose between paying to keep a roof over their heads and eating—facts that left a large impression on him. Since then he has volunteered to help collect, sort and package the food collected at the annual Bethpage-Island Harvest Food Bank Turkey Drive.
Foster and Alovis, both East Hills residents, created Foodie Card to help better serve the needs of their burgeoning food and beverage-focused Facebook group, Tri-State Restaurant Club. With the purchase of each Foodie Card donates a day of meals to those less fortunate through its charity partner, Island Harvest Food Bank. Since its inception, Foodie Card has helped fund more than 6,000 meals.
Tickets for the Taste of the Harvest Celebration are $300 per person; the purchase helps Island Harvest Food Bank continue its hunger-relief mission throughout Long Island.
For more information about the event, including sponsorship opportunities, contact Stacy Parsell, vice president of development, at 631-873-4775, or at stacy@islandharvest.org, or visit www.islandharvest.org.
