Serving between 500-600 families a month, the local food bank has experienced an increase in need for assistance.
“We have tripled the number of families that are in need of our assistance,” Ryan said. “With unemployment and the recent cutback in the food stamp program, we have added an average of 20 families a month in the last six months.”
In the 24-year history of the food bank, it is now the busiest they have ever been. Families are able to get assistance from the food bank once a month from two separate programs at the food bank, commodities and the food bank.
“Each family can draw once from the commodity stores and once from the food bank stores, it is two separate programs,” Ryan said.
Now with the Food Bowl back in action and the local community pitching in, the food bank can increase their supply that is also supported by Northwest Harvest and Coastal Harvest. Recent expansion of the Food Bank facility allows additional storage to help meet the demand.
Area schools have taken on the challenge and challenged themselves to assist with the increased need going to the public to take donations. In Raymond, school students went caroling for donations, trading a song for a tin of food or cash in hand. Willapa Valley ran a series of events that included a McDonalds Take-over, students paying to eat or use certain technology during class and even getting a teacher to “Kiss a Cow”.
“It was as close as I have ever been to an out of body experience,” said Colby Rogers, the Valley English teacher who found $98 in his donation jar, enough to make him the front runner and have the privilege to kiss the cow.
“The kids got a kick out of it,” Rogers said. “The entire Willapa Valley student body should all be quite proud of how many pounds of food they collected.”
Raymond had donations of $1,774 and 1,202 pounds of food and Willapa Valley came in with $2,318.26 and 584.5 pounds of food, the total donation to the North Pacific County Food Bank was $4,033.81 in cash donations and 1,786.5 pounds of food. Converting the food weight into cash the combined donation was worth $4,212.46.