Food from the Heart comes at crucial time for Harvest Hope Food Bank

The ninth annual “Food From the Heart” Midlands food drive will be held Saturday, April 1, 2017 at participating local grocery stores in Richland and Lexington Counties. Last year’s food drive had 33 grocery stores participate across Richland and Lexington Counties and over 750 volunteers from Shandon Baptist and Northside Baptist Churches assisted in the event. It was a huge success making it one on of the largest food collection days in the history of Harvest Hope Food Bank. The drive raised 132,409 pounds of food, equal to approximately 102,000 meals.

This drive comes at a time when Harvest Hope Food Bank’s supplies are extremely low. Their warehouses have less than a day’s supply of food, and the food bank is struggling to meet the needs of their partner agencies and clients. The food bank supplies meals for nearly 50,000 people each week, across 20 counties in South Carolina.

“Every year our clients can be certain that they will have enough food to eat because of this amazing event!” said Denise Holland, CEO, Harvest Hope Food Bank. “We are so very fortunate to have the continued support of WLTX TV, HIS Radio, The Dude 94.3 FM, church volunteers and all of the participating supermarkets in this year’s Food from the Heart event. The donated food we receive every year is always a tremendous resource towards feeding those who quietly suffer from hunger in our communities.”

The food drive will be organized and worked by volunteers from Shandon Baptist Church and Northside Baptist members as they positions themselves outside stores to offer shoppers the opportunity to take red “Food from The Heart” grocery bags and participate by purchasing products off a list of suggested items. Suggested items include canned goods, peanut butter, rice, beans, diapers, baby food and other items. The bags are collected outside the stores and taken to Harvest Hope Food Bank where church volunteers sort the items. They will be distributed to local food pantries and soup kitchens. One hundred percent of all goods collected will benefit men, women and children in the Midlands.

Across Harvest Hope Food Bank’s 20 counties over 330,000 people struggle with hunger, including more than 100,000 children. In some areas, child food insecurity is as high as 30%, meaning one in three children miss at least one meal a month. Harvest Hope provides food through their emergency food pantries, partner agencies, senior feeding programs, child feeding programs, and other avenues.

Harvest Hope Food Bank was founded in 1981 as the result of a shared vision of business leaders and the faith community who set out to provide for the hungry in Columbia. Harvest Hope distributed over 28 million pounds of food last year and feeds approximately 50,000 people a week. Their main offices are located in Columbia, but the organization also has satellite locations in Cayce, Greenville, and Florence.