The Food Bank for Central and Northeast Missouri held a 12 hour food drive at the Kirksville Wal-Mart
KIRKSVILLE, MO -- If you were doing some grocery shopping to kick-off the holiday weekend Friday, you may had a chance to donate for a great cause.
The Food Bank for Central and Northeast Missouri held a 12 hour food drive at the Kirksville Wal-Mart.
People dropped off non-perishable goods at The Food Bank Truck; people also had the opportunity to make a monetary donation at its table or made one at checkout.
“At every cash register we'll have a scan card.” Said Mike DeSantis, Regional Coordinator at The Food Bank. “You're invited by one of the cashiers to donate a dollar or two dollars. Every time they scan it, that's a dollar. At the end of the day, Wal-Mart will write us a check. We'll take that too.”
The Food Bank along with its agencies help feed about 2,300 people in Adair County alone and more than 97,000 in all 32 counties in Central and Northeast Missouri.
“The Food Bank for Central and Northeast Missouri actually provides food for three local pantries in Adair County: LOVE INC, Salvation Army, and Christian Community Food Depot. Their job is to distribute the food that we give them. Last month when I checked, about 80% of the food that was distributed locally came from the food bank. That's our function. Last year, we distributed about 27.5 million pounds of food. About close to 800,000 pounds of food came to Adair County for free.”
When you did make a donation, you also got the chance to take a free picture with Uncle Sam himself in honor of the 4th of July holiday.
The food drive was held to help create awareness of hunger in the area and to help those in need.
“We're trying to help those people who are unemployed. The recession is still with us. We're not thrilled about that. But we're not economic experts. What we do in our current seats is to provide hope to people through food. If you have food, you have hope for another day. If you don't have food and your children don't have anything to eat, it's hard to dream about an education, it's hard to dream about baseball, dream. You can't dream about at all because you're thinking ‘Where is that food coming from.’ So that's our role.”
Every $1 that was donated will help The Food Bank buy about 20 pounds of food for every person in need.
If you missed out on the food drive you can go to http://www.sharefoodbringhope.org/ to donate.
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