Food drives are key to feeding our neighbors
There are so many volunteers, donors & friends who work “behind the scenes” to make sure our neighbors don’t go hungry. Our friends at All Saints Anglican Church in Weddington definitely fall in this category!
Almost every week for the past 3 years (yes… 3 YEARS!) these kind folks have collected nonperishables and dropped them off at our food pantry warehouse in Indian Trail.
For the past few weeks our friends at All Saints have specifically been collecting nonperishables for our Great Turkey Countdown. We definitely still need help to gather those items, especially stuffing mix, canned cranberry sauce and canned green beans and fruit cocktail.
As of this morning, we still need 907 turkeys to reach our 1,500 goal to provide a Thanksgiving feast for 1,500 local families! A $40 donation provides one frozen turkey (or ham!) and all the fixin’s for one family. Give online at Turkeys.CommonHeart.org. And don’t forget about volunteer opportunities on delivery day (Sat., Nov. 19). We still need 77 drivers in Marshville and 22 more people to work onsite. Sign up online! Many of the members at All Saints volunteer regularly, too, but in times like these we’re especially thankful for the ongoing food drive.
All our evening pantries have been seeing a drastic increase in the number of families seeking help with groceries the past few months. At Benton Heights, for example, volunteers are now serving an average of 80+ families each week, up from their typical 30-35 families.
As government assistance has decreased and the cost of groceries has risen more families need a boost. This is coming at a time though when food pantries nationwide (including us!) are having a hard time being able to buy nonperishables in bulk due to shortages and logistics issues.
Want to help? We need folks to host food drives! This is a perfect group activity for churches, neighborhoods, sports teams, businesses etc! We’re running really low on most of our “staple” items especially cereal, oatmeal canned beans, canned fruit, pasta & pasta sauce and canned vegetables. Get details and a full list of needed food drive items here.
And as we prepare for Thanksgiving we’ve added disposable gloves (size Medium, Large & XL only, please) and packing tape to our Amazon Wish List — these are staples we use every day in the pantry! Don’t forget to log into Smile.Amazon.com and select us as your charity every time you shop and Amazon will donate a portion to us!