From 9 a.m. to noon Saturday, countless volunteers canvassed area neighborhoods as part of the annual Newton County Food Basket Brigade’s door-to-door solicitation for non-perishable food items.
One of the volunteers was Emily Hoover, 14, with St. Canera Catholic Church.
“We look for bags on the doorsteps and if there are, we pick them up,” Hoover said. “This is my second year doing this. Last year, we filled up a car’s trunk with food.”
The group picked up canned soup, green beans, corn and beans, boxes of mixes and other items.
“I am doing this out of the goodness of my heart,” Hoover said.
Before Hoover and a handful of volunteers from St. Canera Catholic Church left the church grounds, Jenifer Youngblood, the seventh and eighth grade teacher for the Parish School of Religion (PSR) at the church, and Duane Davis, head of the PSR, spoke about the church’s involvement.
“Over the last few years, our seventh and eighth grade students have done the pickup on this day,” Davis said. “Then, our high school group goes down to the armory on Saturday to help distribute. Also, my family has been going to the armory since 1993 to help.
“We try to keep our youth involved in some service projects throughout the year and this is one service project that it is a given that this is one thing that we are going to do. “
Youngblood believes the project has a positive goal.
“This helps them learn to give back to the community, to help and do charity,” Youngblood said. “We also did a food drive through our school for PSR, held on Sundays. We made a little contest to see which grade could collect the most food. We just did it one week. Hopefully next year, we will do it a couple of more weeks. Actually, we did really well this year. We got a lot of food for one week. That will go to the food basket brigade.”
Youngblood said the students collected at least 50 cans before to the door-to-door event.
“The students just brought in the food from their homes,” she added.
Once the volunteers collected food Saturday, the items were taken to the armory, where more volunteers helped by unloading trucks, cars, and vans and then organized the items. The armory now resembles a gigantic grocery store.
The food items are much needed. According to Newton County Food Basket Brigade President Robert Allen, the goal of 1,100 families to receive the food has been surpassed.
“We now have 1,148 families,” Allen said. “We are around $30,000 that has been donated to us (from individuals and businesses).”
Allen was impressed with the amount of non-perishable food collected.
“It is doing really, really well,” Allen said in the first hour of collections. “I think that the schools came through. We are looking at doubling what they did.”
Brigade organizers set a goal of 100,000 pounds of food to feed 1,100 families.
The brigade’s goal is to provide food for a traditional Christmas dinner, plus basic staples to last up to two weeks, for Newton County residents certified as low income, disadvantaged, disabled and / or elderly in need of assistance. Virtually all individuals and families certified to receive food through the Food Basket Brigade are also receiving assistance from DFS, Economic Security Corporation, the Neosho Crosslines, the Help Center and other relief agencies during the brigade.
The basic premise of the basket brigade is that in this land of plenty, nobody should have to go hungry at Christmas.
Once all of the food came in on Saturday, the organizers tallied what was needed and ordered the remainder of the food for the distribution day, Saturday, Dec. 20, at the Armory.
There is still time to help.
“We will take anything until Friday, Dec. 19,” said Allen. “Money and food can be taken to the Armory.”
In 2007, food baskets — actually several sacks of food — was distributed to 907 families representing more than 3,400 people. That marked the largest distribution in the history of the food basket brigade. Contributions included nearly $30,000 in cash donations used to help purchase food. Food and cash left over was given to the Neosho Help Center for distribution to clients in 2008.
Since its beginning in 1988, the Food Basket Brigade has collected and distributed more than 2 million pounds of food.
Neosho, Mo. —
