With a little more than a week left before Christmas, food
drives are gearing up for a final push for donations.
At 3,200 pounds gathered so far, the Community Pantry is hoping
for procrastinators. The goal is to collect 25,000 pounds.
Over the weekend, the Top Hatters turned in a donation of 2,385
pounds of food and $200, said Tom Larkin, executive director of
Community Pantry.
With a little more than a week left before Christmas, food drives are gearing up for a final push for donations.
At 3,200 pounds gathered so far, the Community Pantry is hoping for procrastinators. The goal is to collect 25,000 pounds.
Over the weekend, the Top Hatters turned in a donation of 2,385 pounds of food and $200, said Tom Larkin, executive director of Community Pantry.
“I’d love to get hundreds and thousands of pounds, but we’ll deal with what donations we get,” Larkin said.
Second Harvest is reporting 200,000 pounds of food so far, according to Jeffrey Kongslie, director of development and marketing. Second Harvest set a goal of collecting 1 million pounds of food during November and December. Second Harvest of Santa Cruz and San Benito counties has 56 barrels scattered around the two counties for people to deposit food in. Last year, Second Harvest collected 945,000 pounds.
“We get a lot more donations toward the end, which can be nerve-wrecking for us,” Kongslie said.
Larkin admitted donations are coming in slow. But, even after suffering a blow with a break-in over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend with about $13,000 in office equipment stolen and a van burglarized, Community Pantry is doing OK, he said.
“I think (the break-in) increased awareness of what we’re doing. People have been asking themselves, ‘why would someone do this?'” Larkin said. “We’ve had a great response in a positive way.”
Larkin said the police still have no leads on the incident.
All food gathered by Second Harvest stays in the community. Second Harvest is mainly in charge of collecting and sorting food – it forwards the food to agencies that distribute it.
Locally, Community Pantry is the largest recipient of food from Second Harvest, Larkin said, with more than 120 organizations benefiting from Second Harvest.
“We could always do better, but we’re doing fine,” Larkin said.
Community Pantry will have barrels out until the end of the year and Second Harvest is open until 1 p.m. Dec. 24. People can give donations to Second Harvest via phone or its Web site, www.thefoodbank.org, Kongslie said.
The most needed items are turkeys, brown paper bags, tuna fish, soups, peanut butter, rice, beans, jackets, blankets and money – for every $1 donated, $9 of food can be purchased.
For more information or to donate, call Community Pantry at 637-0340 or Second Harvest at 722-7110. Also, barrels are set up throughout the county at various spots.
