Artists for World Peace Holiday Food and Clothing Drive

Noted Middletown Jewelry Designer, Wendy Black Nasta, has a strong connection to the Lakota tribe of South Dakota. With a bit on native American blood, Black Nasta has found guidance for life and spiritual matters from leaders of the tribe.

As payback, for the last 18 years she has run and managed a holiday food and clothing tribe, filling a truck with blankets, coats, toys and food for the people in need on the Rosebud Reservation.

This year the drop off times and date are at The First Church on Court Street in
Middletown on Thursday, December 11 from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. Black Nasta is looking for donations of new blankets, new or gently-used winter coats, non-perishable food items, particularly flour, sugar, baking powder and shortening for traditional flatbread, and coffee. Black Nasta also would welcome donation of new toys and gifts for children. Cash donations are also accepted. Black Nasta is also seeking volunteers to sort donations, and to load the truck on the afternoon of Friday December 12, beginning at 5:30 pm.

Volunteers and donors can email Black Nasta (wendyblacknasta@aol.com) or call her at 685-1789. In addition she has Peace Belt t-shirts for sale on the evenings of donations are being collected, sorted and packed.

"The poverty on the reservation is so severe, that our donations are the holiday meals and gifts for most of these people," Black Nasta said. "We serve about 400 people. Our spirituality is all about taking care of each other. The giveaway is at the heart of it all."

Black Nasta had more than 300 volunteers last year, many of whom came from as faraway as New York City and Boston to help.

"It's all people to people," Black Nasta said. "We do everything from collecting the donations to driving them to the reservation and distributing them to families. It's a most incredible feeling."