Radio Station Helping NH Food Bank

One of the city’s top sports and talk radio stations is helping others by holding a food drive.

WTPL, 107.7, The Pulse, was broadcasting live all day on July 1, at the Shaw’s on D’Amante Drive, raising money and food donations for the New Hampshire Food Bank.

Shelly Breer, the general sales manager for the station, said the food bank was down to just a few days worth of food for area agencies and soup kitchens, so the effort was coming at a perfect time. 

The station will be broadcasting live again on July 2, all day, accepting donations, selling T-shirts, and hoping that people will focus on the hunger and poverty problem in New Hampshire.

“My hope is to raise awareness for the public to realize there is a great need out there right now,” she said. “Hunger affecting one in eight in New Hampshire is a hidden epidemic and I’m hoping people will pay more attention to the problem and get more involved their communities and maybe help out.”

Last year, the station raised $2,000 in cash and 3,000 lbs. of food and it is hoping to better that effort by the end of the day on Tuesday.

The station has been doing the food drive for a number of years and then turned the effort into a radio journal on poverty and hunger, interviewing authors and those involved with the agencies, according to Breer.

“We have more than 400 food service agencies … soup kitchens, homeless shelters …  that the food bank serves,” she said.

Breer said the problem was getting worse, especially for children who weren’t eating properly, since hunger can harm brain development and school performance.

“It’s kind of a long-term thing that we’re looking at when you think about it in those terms,” she said. “If their brains don’t develop in the right way, they’re not going to have a competitive edge when it comes to education, in school, college and jobs.”