Boy Scouts Collect Food to Help Dwindling Donations
WHAT: Scouting For Food 2008, Boy Scouts going door to door distributing grocery bags for annual food drive
WHEN: Saturday, March 21, 2009
WHO: America’s Second Harvest of Wisconsin & Milwaukee County Boy Scouts
WHERE: Mt. Olive Lutheran School, 5327 W. Washington Blvd., Milwaukee
(Media interested in uniformed Scouts distributing “Scouting for Food” bags can accompany Pack and Troop 34 beginning at 8:45 a.m.)
WHY: Second Harvest feeds 235,000 people every year and 37% of those are children.
Milwaukee, Wis.-Thousands of Boy Scouts will go door-to-door on Saturday, March 21 in Milwaukee, Waukesha and Racine, distributing “Scouting for Food” bags. Scouting For Food is one of the largest one-day food drives benefiting Second Harvest. This year’s effort will be particularly important since food donations are at a 10 year-low and demand for food is up 30%.
“Emergency food pantries are seeing many new people come through their doors for the first time. In fact, many of these programs are serving double the number of people they did six months to one year ago,” said Bonnie Bellehumeur, president of America’s Second Harvest of Wisconsin.
Residents are encouraged to fill the bags with nonperishable food items including canned fruits and vegetables, tuna, macaroni and cheese, canned soup, peanut butter, cereal and pasta. Boy Scouts will return on Saturday, March 28 to pick up the bags. Please leave the bags on your doorstep before 9:00 a.m. for pick up.
Since 1987, the Boy Scouts have collected more than three million pounds of food to help feed the hungry. The food collected in Milwaukee County is donated to Second Harvest. Food collected in Waukesha and Racine counties benefits local food pantries in those communities. In addition, Scouting For Food bags will appear in the Sunday, March 22 edition of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. The general public is encouraged to fill the bag with nonperishable food items and drop it off at their local Pick ‘n Save store.
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235,000 people in Wisconsin rely on food supplied by America’s Second Harvest of Wisconsin each year.
The food bank is the largest, private, non-profit distributor of food in the state. Second Harvest Food Bank distributes nearly 11 million pounds of food annually to 1,100 food pantries, meal programs and shelters throughout Wisconsin. Second Harvest Food Bank is affiliated with Feeding America, formerly named America’s Second Harvest, which is consistently ranked as one of the most efficient charities, out of the country’s 100 largest charities, by Forbes magazine. Since 1982, America’s Second Harvest of Wisconsin has distributed more than 200 million pounds of food. To learn more about hunger in Wisconsin, log onto www.secondharvestwi.org.
