Posted on 11/25/2006 2:26:59 PM PST by SandRat
It's sad, but a lot of people often go hungry during the holidays.
But not if one local Boy Scout has anything to say about it.
"Up until about two weeks before Thanksgiving, we didn't have a lot of food," admits Anna Garrison who has worked for the Marana Community Food Bank for the past 10 years.
That's not the case now!
"Soups, oatmeal, mac and cheese," says Boy Scout Riley Busby.
"I think it's fantastic. I just. I think it's wonderful!" smiles Garrison.
"Rice, juice, cereal," adds Busby.
Garrison says she's never seen this much food donated from just one person.
That's because she's never met soon-to-be Eagle Scout, Riley Busby.
He says he got the idea for his Eagle project while watching the news.
"So I thought maybe I should help them out by doing a service project... a food drive."
And it took some work.
First, he got donated bags from Safeway and Fry's and attached fliers to the bags.
After that, he had to get a permit from the town of Oro Valley and the Copper Creek homeowner's association so he could put the bags on people's doors.
Then he organized 54 young girls and boys from his church to help.
They hit 955 homes and that can mean a lot of food.
"We just started loading all the bags in a trailer and we filled like three-fourths of the trailer full."
Before Riley's project, the shelves at the food bank were bare and totally empty. And as a result of his eagle project, over 1,800 pounds of food!
"You had empty shelves and he shows up with over 1,800 pounds of food...what was going through your mind?" I asked Garrison.
"Well, I thought it was fantastic that a boy his age had the compassion for people to do a project like this because that's kind of overwhelming."
Riley's project gets reviewed in December and from what we've seen, he should get his "Eagle".
My troop did 1050 lbs last weekend... ;-)
This is just one boy's project our official Scouting for Food will be during Scout Week. Instead of Scouts Getting Birthday Gifts they'll be collecting food gifts thoughput the County for others.
Eagke Scouts have my respect.
What a nice story... And to think that the liberals practically want to close the Boy Scout...
Yep because Scouts hold to certain values according to the Scout Law and the Scout Oath.
Makes you proud, doesn't it? Our troop set out to beat last year's record of 3,000 cans, and managed to collect over 5,000 cans of food this year. I was very impressed with the boys, and with the outpouring of support in our community. While not all people donated food to the Scout food drive, many people donated very generously. Our community put out a special call for baby formula, which isn't cheap. We were pleased to collect quite a few containers of formula, in addition to some unexpectedly fancy foods. Given the opportunity, Americans are a very generous people.
I stopped in at our local community cupboard the day before Thanksgiving. The huge supply of food put a big lump in my throat. For me, this is a big part of what America is all about. We take care of one another when the chips are down.
We do ours after in February because by then the pantries are bare and need the help to get through the winter heading to Easter.
Good thinking. Our local schools sometimes collect in the dead of winter. As you pointed out, the need doesn't vanish when the holidays are over.
Yet many courts and governmental agencies side with the gay lobby against the scouts.
Just dont expect him to be able to leave his boat at a dock in San Diego.
I have yet to see a "gay" food drive
Hope things are going great with you!
It is now in its 23rd year. I acted as director for 16 years before I handed it off to a very talented woman who started as a client. I still maintain their computers (they use a database I designed 15 years ago that runs in FileMaker Pro on Macintoshes) and extract their statistics... I also still do client intake interviewing from time to time. In the 12 months ending October 31, the North Stockton Food Pantry provided emergency groceries to 12,559 people. I am proud to say that better than 70% of the families that were helped sought help fewer than 10 times... and more than 50% less than 3.
I was also President of the Emergency Food Bank that served the entire county for a couple of years while we acquired a long term lease for some city land (I paid the first 10 years rent out of my pocket... $10) and built a warehouse and office.
I can tell you that the Food Drives of the Boy Scouts was always a God Send. Generally, the holiday drives done by the Scouts, the Mail Carriers, and the Board of Realtors Christmas Can Tree, carried our main Food Bank all the way to March. When the Scouts brought in their collections, the main floor of our warehouse (about 2000 square feet) would be four feet deep in cases of canned and dry goods. When the mail carriers came with theirs, we would have to beg, borrow and steal more warehouse space...
One story I love to tell is about our Thanksgiving distributions...
For about 10 years, we would start the week of Thanksgiving (Monday morning) with five or six turkeys in our freezers. On the Tuesday, before Thanksgiving, we would open our doors at 7:30AM to start distributing the makings for a Thanksgiving Feast... usually there woud be a line up around the block. We had to have police there to direct traffic and control the crowds.
We would continue giving away food until the last person had received help... no one was turned away. Turkeys and other holiday food donations would be coming in the back door as the client families came in the side, were interviewed, and went out the front door with bags of food. The local Boy Scout troops were among our volunteers handling turkeys on that day... some of them skipped school to be there. Every family of three or more persons received an appropriate sized turkey. Singles and couples got a small ham or chicken.
It was truly amazing... EVERY YEAR, when that very exhausting day was over (sometimes as late as 9:00PM) and the last client helped, we would have... only five or six turkeys left in our freezers. God does provide... but it was always nerve wracking. Would we have enough? We always did... but still nerve wracking.
Finally, I suggested that we mount a before Thanksgiving Turkey drive. I contacted some of the larger grocery chains for permission to park a refrigerated truck in their parking lots with a volunteer as a collection station. Shoppers could buy one of the loss-leader turkeys with their regular grocery shopping and bring it out to our truck and donate it right there.
That year, and every year they ran the drive, there were over 600 turkeys in the freezer at the start of Thanksgiving week... we called the "Turkey Trot". (Feel free to do a Turkey Trot in your community next Thanksgiving... or even this Christmas!)
Again, Boy Scouts were among our most important volunteers manning the donation trucks.
Stories like that make me happy I live in America. I work for a smaller grocery retail company (may do our first billion in sales next year) and its amazing at the outpouring we get every time we try to collect whethers it was a one time thing (Katrina) or an every year thing (JDRF).
Just got back from AppleBee's. Had to escape the Thanksgiving leftovers. Son MissileMan and his wife MissileContgrol are back home (got safe arrival call.) So all's well. You?
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