As the marketing and communication coordinator for the REMC, I have been participating a leadership program which has allowed me to take on a project benefiting the community. combining our Concern for Community and our focus on community collaboration, I am excited to share the results of our Dinner in a Bag Food Drive.
Having worked at a food pantry for many years, I was aware that pantries can be hard for families to navigate. Often, individual ingredients on a shelf can be overwhelming if you are unsure how to use them.
Our Dinner in a Bag concept helped to ease this process by offering families an entire meal in one bag. We even added labels to the front, listing the ingredients and the appliances needed to cook the meal. Also, we included easy-to-follow instructions inside the bag to ensure a good experience for the family.
Over the last six months, our community has shown up for this event. From May to October, we received over 500 cans of goods dropped off in our front office.
Our members donated cash and food at our Annual Meeting, and employees contributed nearly 600 canned goods. Thanks to additional donations from our board of directors, we collected almost 2,000 cans of goods altogether.
Im happy to say that local businesses and organizations also were part of this event. Walmart donated a $50 gift card to our efforts, along with allowing me the ability to purchase large quantities of groceries at a time. Cooper Farms was incredibly generous and donated two cases of turkey to our turkey dinner recipes. Red Gold offered four cases of diced tomatoes with green chilies, and the Bluff Point Friends Church donated $100 to help us reach our goal.
From the beginning, we hoped to collect enough donations to create 300 bags. This would allow us to donate 50 bags to each of the six pantries in our six service counties. We reached that goal at the beginning of October, before our food drive was finished. The total number of bags completed was 306.
The power of community is incredible to watch unfold in real time. Thank you to everyone who helped make this food drive a huge success. For this year, our food drive is in the bag!
Carly Nichols is the marketing and communication coordinator for Jay County REMC.
