Afton Food Pantry’s 5th Annual Fighting Hunger Games Food Drive brought over 10,000 usable food items to the pantry’s shelves last week. Youth gathered boxes and bags that were left on front porches and at front doors throughout the upper valley on Tuesday, October 7.
With this annual drive, the Food Pantry sends volunteer youth to deliver a door hanger, notifying residents in Afton, Fairview, Smoot, Osmond, Grover and Auburn that donations can be left at the front door on a specific date, and youth will collect the donations and get them to the pantry.
“This year’s Fighting Hunger Games Food Drive was a tremendous success, thanks to the incredible generosity and teamwork of our community,” said Sierra Mitchell, Food Pantry Director. “From local youth and churches to families and businesses and those that sent in monetary donations, so many came together to make sure our shelves stay stocked as the need continues to rise.”
This year’s drive collected 10,545 usable food items, 1,467 hygiene items, and $4,480 in monetary donations received through Venmo according to instructions on the door hanger.
Last year’s collection brought 11,733 useable food items and 1,931 hygiene items, which means that last year’s drive was marginally more successful, but this year’s drive brought fewer expired items than last year, which is a valuable difference to the pantry staff.
“While this year’s total donations came in slightly lower than last year, we’re still deeply grateful and remain encouraged by the continued support that keeps our shelves stocked and our mission moving forward,” Mitchell added.
Once the donations arrived at the pantry, volunteers invested 400 hours to check dates and tally all the items that were collected. “Getting items grouped with the correct expiration date is a long and hard task.”
Focus will now turn to organizing and shelving the items so that they can be used as needed.
Some of the collected donations were unusable by the pantry due to expiration date policies, though this year’s donations contained fewer expired items than last year’s efforts. “We did receive quite a few expired items this year with some dating back farther than we’d like to admit, like to 2002. We’re hopeful that number continues to decrease as our community learns more about food donation guidelines.”
Mitchell expressed gratitude for the generosity of donors and volunteers in this enormous effort. “Every can, every effort, and every act of kindness makes a difference. We couldn’t do this without all of you.”
