Food Drive

Two of our children are having a food drive at school. It is for families in their school that could use help making a nice holiday meal. That reminded me of one of the food drives we did with my friend and neighbor Mary at Mellowed Flair. Food drives aren’t just for Thanksgiving and Christmas. Food banks are often low in the summer when children are home for three meals a day. One year we chose to do a “We love our neighborhood” food drive for Valentines Day. We made fliers on pink paper that gave suggested food donations and the date and time we would be back to pick them up. We taped them to paper bags and placed those on our neighbor’s porches about a week earlier. On Valentines Day we took our vehicles and children to collect the paper bags filled with items that they had left at their mailboxes. We were amazed at the response. The local grocery store donated the bags that we distributed to about 60 houses. If it’s warm and daylight you could use wagons to collect the food to keep from getting in and out of the vehicle or so little ones can help. We took the items to one of our favorite local food pantries Papa's Pantry.  If you are interested in doing a food drive search for food pantries in your area or ask around and see what food pantries others would recommend. Often times the food pantries have pre-made fliers or “barrels” that you could sit out at a business or school to collect the can goods. There may even be a Salvation Army or United Way in your area that accepts food and volunteers year round. I want to teach our children to give. Helping our community have enough food to eat is just a small way we can share what we have. If you feel you don’t have enough to share check out the Cut-Out-Hunger program at Coupon Mom. She matches up sales with the week the coupon was in the paper. Each week there are a few free items at our local stores and several that are $ .20 -$ .40 each. Those make for budget friendly items to give away.