Doylestown, PA – The Bucks County Opportunity Council is pleased to announce the success of its first annual Adopt-A-Pantry food drive, with 11.5 tons of food collected to benefit local families.
The Adopt-A-Pantry drive was organized to make food donations available to low-income families at the beginning of summer, when pantries shelves are the emptiest and school lunch programs cease.
In partnership with New York Life, Delaware Valley College and media partners The Intelligencer and Bucks County Courier Times, Adopt-A-Pantry set a high goal for Bucks County: to collect 15,400 meals, equivalent to ten tons of food in just two weeks.
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Food collection sites were organized throughout Bucks County beginning on May 1st. Residents, businesses, worship houses and local organizations banded together to exceed this goal with donations of pastas, sauces, peanut butter & jelly, condiments, baby food and countless other household staples. Contributions during the drive resulted in 7.3 tons of food, which was combined with $8,414 in donations from a recent donation match challenge launched by Mr. Gene Epstein or Wrightstown. The challenge added over 4 tons of critically needed food items to the collection total for Adopt-A-Pantry 2013.
The donations benefitted the Opportunity Council’s Food and Nutrition Network (FaNN), a local network of 27 food pantries. The network distributed 1,243,715 meals to more than 102,000 people last year — $2,126,504 worth of food. The donations will fill an ever-growing gap in making food available to those in need, as the network has seen almost a 20 percent increase in the number of people visiting its pantries in the past three years, despite severe budget cuts.
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“Food is so basic, and so is kindness,” said Roger Collins, executive director of the Opportunity Council. “We thank the community of Bucks County for remembering others.”
The Bucks County Opportunity Council would like to acknowledge its generous Food Collection Partners for supporting Adopt-A-Pantry 2013.
Avery Dennison, Buckaroos Square & Round Dance Club, Buckingham Forest Neighborhood, Bucks County Community College, Calkins Media (Bucks County Courier Times & The Intelligencer), Calvary Church Open Hand Mission (Souderton), County of Bucks (Bucks County Courthouse), The Dance Academy, The Dollar Tree (Warrington), Doylestown United Methodist Church, Doylestown United Methodist Church (Circle of Friends), DVL, Inc., Dyventive, First Federal of Bucks County, Flowers Mill Veterinary Hospital, Fulton Bank, Girl Scout Troop #235, Girl Scout Troop #251, Girl Scout Daisy Troop #21783, John Kennedy Ford (Feasterville), The JONES Group, Love the People, National Penn Bank (10 Branches), New York Life, PA CareerLink/Bucks County Workforce Investment Board, Pennridge Central Middle School, Potential, Inc. Red Robin Restaurant (Langhorne), Sleepy Beaver Farm, Temple Judea, Wawa (14 locations).
Bucks County Opportunity Council, Inc. is a non-profit organization dedicated to helping low-income people in Bucks County achieve and sustain economic self-sufficiency. For more information, visit www.bcoc.org.
