Holidays bring extra donations of food

Summary

The last 2 weeks have brought a bounty of extra donations of food for the pantry. Many pantries close for a holiday transferring their food to this pantry. We have lately had massive donations of bread products, produce especially bananas, and meat items. So exciting to be able to share all of this with the community. We also partner with other organizations to distribute food before it becomes inedible and compost or animal feed. The magical activities to transform over 12 coolers and dozens of boxes of food into an organized pantry for the clients is always surprising. Many people come out of the line-up to help unload vehicles and organize food every week. We regularly have more than 20 people sorting and carrying foods to organize this pantry. This is in addition to the 15 or more who collect food donations daily and bring them to Hansford for sorting and storing. Recently one of the volunteers re-engineered a steel shelf into a dolly for transporting food from the vehicles into the pantry. What an amazing gift! We have 2 volunteers as young as 7 assisting and several over 80. We even have a couple of volunteers who harvest fresh veggies and herbs from their own garden to share.
We are also blessed with donations of all kinds of food items from the community to help serve the 130-140 people who attend weekly to bring food home. The major grocery donors provide the fresh fruits and veggies, the meats, dairy and baked items. We receive individual meals and sandwiches too. Our commercial location fills our shelves with items like granola bars, chips, other snacks and sandwiches. And with the cash donations we are able to secure things like pasta, flour, sugar, canned beans and more.
On July 6th we served more than 146 attendees providing food to more than 434 people.