LAURINBURG – The post office in Laurinburg collected between 3,500 and 4,000 pounds of food for Church Community Services’ food bank as part of its Stamp Out Hunger campaign.
But the recent effort may only help for couple of weeks, according to the nonprofit’s Director Leslie Womack.
“Right now we’re sorting it,” Womack said. “Some will go to Christmas Cheer, and some things like mushrooms we can’t put in our bags, so we put it on the freebie shelf.”
The bags are put together by workers like Felicia Bethea and given to clients who are running short on food.
The donated food will provide two or three meals to participants depending on the size of the family.
“We put a protein, two vegetables, four soups and other items,” Bethea said. “If we don’t have a certain item we’ll substitute something else like extra soup.”
There were a lot of substitutions being made at the food bank recently because the organization has seen 148 new clients and given out 1,500 bags of food in the first quarter of the year.
“When I left for vacation on Friday, the fruit and vegetable shelf and the rice and cereal shelf were empty, and when I came in today everything was full,” said Bethea who is optimistic that the donations will last at least until the end of the month.
Church Community services also hands out food to homeless and people in emergency housing in local motels.
Bags are filled with cans with pop tops and items that can be microwaved like oodles of noodles.
“We see at least five people deemed homeless a week, and some of our homeless eat the noodles like they are without microwaving them,” said Bethea adding that she did not realize how many homeless people were in the county until she began working at the charity.
Church Community Services had plenty of help to collect the donated items from the post office.
Members of two Girl Scout Troops and a Boy Scout Troop were on hand to help transport items from the Post Office to the Church Community Services building.
Candy Houg’s 11-year-old daughter Emma and her 14-year-old son Alec both helped out on Saturday.
“[Emma] worked on her Bronze Award and volunteered with Church Community Services last year and wanted to volunteer this year too,” Houg said.
Houg said the experience was a great reminder for her children as to what other people experience because while volunteers waited for food donations to come into the post office they helped sort donated clothes.
“One thing that surprised them is that people want other people’s old clothes,” Houg said. “It was humbling to them.”
