GREENFIELD — As the wheels on two buses go round and round next month, the shelves of food pantries across the region will hopefully fill up during an historically busy time of the year.
The Franklin County Hunger Task Force will hold its annual Fill The Belly Bus Food Drive, held each year to highlight the period when summer camps that provide children with meals are beginning to close down and school hasn’t quite started yet — a time during which Matthew Leger-Small of Community Action said local food pantries typically see a spike in demand — on Aug 12.
The goal will be to collect tons of food from local businesses, organizations and churches through internal food drives. Those donations then will be dropped off at designated collection locations and picked up by buses donated by TravelKuz and the Franklin Regional Transit Authority. It will all be given to local agencies for distribution to needy families during those precarious two weeks.
“It puts food insecurity out front in a time when people are not necessarily thinking about it,” Leger-Small said. “Most donate food around Thanksgiving, but this highlights that food insecurity is a year-round event.”
Businesses who run internal food drives can bring what they collect to one of the designated drop-off locations — Stop & Shop in Greenfield from 9 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. and 1:30 p.m. to 3 p.m.; Food City in Turners Falls from 9 a.m. to noon; Yankee Candle Village in Deerfield from noon to 1 p.m.; Foster’s Supermarket in Greenfield from 12:30 to 3 p.m. or the Greenfield Town Common from 3 to 5 p.m. — where it’ll be picked up by the one of the buses. Individuals are encouraged to bring items, too, if they’d like.
Once collected, it’ll all be divvied up among the Franklin County Community Meals Program, the Franklin Area Survival Center, the Greenfield Salvation Army and Community Action’s Center for Self-Reliance to be given to local families, Leger-Small said.
Cash donations are also welcome, with checks made out to Community Action with Belly Bus in the memo line.
“Our clients rely on these programs to feed themselves and their families. Food is a huge part of the household budget,” Leger-Small said. “Even for low-income families with access to all the resources like SNAP, there’s still a gap between what they need to eat well and access to it. The driving force behind this is to build a community response to it.”
For more information or to organize a drive, contact Leger-Small at mlegersmall@communityaction.us or call 413-376-1179.
You can reach Tom Relihan at: 413-772-0261, ext 264
or: trelihan@recorder.com
On Twitter: @RecorderTom