July 2026 Product Donation Drive – Second Wind Cottages

A Note from GreenStar: GreenStar worked with Cornell students in the Moral Psychology in Action class to help reinvigorate Second Wind Cottages’ on-site food pantry. 

Helping Restore Food Dignity at Second Wind Cottages

My name is Rosey Limmer, and when I finished my first year at Cornell, I arrived home to see Ithaca on the front page of The New York Times. The story discusses a homelessness crisis centered on “the Jungle,” a wooded area behind Route 13 where people lived in whatever shelter they could find. I had spent 9 months in Ithaca and had never encountered it or even heard of it. I am now in my last semester, partnering with Second Wind Cottages alongside my classmate RC Sidoli III through a community-engaged learning course in moral psychology, and that blind spot has never felt more significant.

Second Wind began with Carmen Guidi walking down to “the Jungle” and doing something simple: bringing pizza and listening. He built genuine friendships with the people living there. It was the death of one of those friends — by suicide — that moved Carmen from outreach to action. He knew that relationships alone weren’t enough; people needed a foundation. So he built one, literally: 18 cottages in Newfield to give homeless men stable housing. What began as one
man showing up with food organically grew into a 501(c)(3), and today Second Wind also operates a home in Dryden for women and their children. Their vision is to house people and walk alongside them toward restored lives, rebuilding relationships with themselves, their families, and their broader community.

What sets Second Wind apart is its commitment to that word: restored. Not just housed. Not just fed. Executive Director Ben Miller and his team help residents navigate the maze of government services, healthcare, and employment, the countless barriers that make “just starting over” far harder than it sounds. The system too often treats homelessness as a personal failure rather than a structural one, and Second Wind works to counteract that every day through genuine, sustained relationships with the people they serve.

Transportation is one of the most concrete barriers residents face. The cottages are far from downtown Ithaca, the TCAT runs only every few hours, and a single trip to a grocery store, doctor’s office, or the Office of Social Services takes an hour each way. An on-site food pantry had helped bridge that gap in the past, but it had fizzled out. When RC and I began our partnership with Second Wind, restarting that pantry became our mission.

We started by asking residents what they actually wanted, because people deserve to choose what they eat for dinner. That sounds simple, but it matters enormously. When we brought the first restocked goods, residents came in right away. One man lit up over the strawberry jam; he said he could only ever find preserves anywhere else. It’s a small thing, and it’s everything. There’s a real difference between receiving what someone else decided you should have and being able to choose for yourself. That choice is not a luxury — it is a quiet but powerful form of autonomy, and autonomy is inseparable from dignity. When we treat people as capable of knowing what they want and deserving of getting it, we affirm something fundamental about their humanity, and that is what Second Wind is built on.

GreenStar is now hosting a product drive to help keep this pantry running, and we are so grateful. Every donated item helps a Second Wind resident access food on their own terms. If you’d like to support the food drive, you can purchase the items found on the residents’ Wish List – also available in-store – and leave them in the Product Donations Collections cart at GreenStar’s Cascadilla and Dewitt stores throughout July. GreenStar will bring the donations out to stock Second Wind’s on-site food pantry in August. If you’d like to learn more about Second Wind’s work, visit secondwindcottages.org.