Food Banks are Struggling with This Year’s Thanksgiving

Los Angeles: The Los Angeles Regional Food Bank promises on its site that $1 donated equals four meals for those in need.

It’s also a relief for food banks to have their vaults replenished with donated goods and funds.

The agency hosted its annual insane Super Turkey Day giveaway Monday afternoon.

“I want to help people”, Bennett said. Gosselin said the food bank “has kept him going” since he arrived in Olympia two years ago, including a six-month stretch when he was homeless. “Monetary gifts are always appreciated”.

The volunteers were packing bags of food – a complete Thanksgiving meal – for about 206 families in need who reside in the Dallas and Lake-Lehman school districts. “They can choose between potatoes, stuffing”.

The family also gets a disposable tray, aluminum foil and instructions to use to cook the turkey.

Many families say without this help they wouldn’t not be celebrating Thanksgiving with a turkey on the table.

And, Weinroth said, sometimes it’s a lot easier for a family to share food from their own pantry than come up with a cash donation.

“We wouldn’t run out of food in our dining room”, Chou-Thompson said.

United Food Bank’s 10,000-turkey goal is based on Feeding America’s 2014 Hunger in America study, Paris said. Food bank representatives struggled with last year’s Thanksgiving food drive, as well.

“It really is a fantastic opportunity for students to see the benefits of their efforts be attributed locally, and to help students and families they encounter every single day”, Merkle said. “Maybe we could get an even bigger donation together for Christmas”.

In Columbia County, the USDA estimates 11.7% of all people are food-insecure, meaning they do not have access to enough food because of poverty, unemployment or other barriers. But to the families who pulled into the mobile food pantry at First Pentecostal Church receiving these items may mean their children won’t go to bed hungry tonight.