Kalaheo School students already gave. Robyn Herbig, the PCNC at Kalaheo School, said the food drive being conducted by the students will end Thursday when the Kaua‘i Food Bank comes to pick up the student contributions. “The winning class will
Kalaheo School students already gave.
Robyn Herbig, the PCNC at Kalaheo School, said the food drive being conducted by the students will end Thursday when the Kaua‘i Food Bank comes to pick up the student contributions.
“The winning class will get a pizza party and the teacher of the winning class will get a goodie basket filled with all kinds of things,” Herbig said. “So far, we have more than 1,000 cans of food with more coming in.”
The Kalaheo School food drive coincides with the Kaua‘i Food Bank’s Spring Food and Fund Drive that will be highlighted by the Food Collection Day this Saturday.
Ten locations from the Ching Young Village in Hanalei to Ishihara Market in Waimea will be accepting contributions from people from 9 a.m. Most locations will close at 3 p.m. with the exception of Foodland stores in Princeville and Waipouli that will be accepting contributions until 6 p.m.
Wal-Mart will also be accepting contributions through 6 p.m. along with the Big Save store in Koloa.
The Big Kmart store will close its collection at 5 p.m.
Volunteers from various community organizations will join the Kaua‘i Food Bank staff in manning the locations and accepting contributions for the drive that has a goal of $40,000 and 40,000 pounds of food.
Michelle Panoke of the Kaua‘i Food Bank said currently the food collection is at more than 14,000 pounds. Kaua‘i Food Bank treasurer Analyn Flores said the financial level is at almost $15,000.
“As you can see, we still have a long way to go to reach our goals,” Flores said. “We need people’s help.”
The Kaua‘i Food Bank was started after Hurricane Iniki struck Kaua‘i in September 1992 and left thousands of individuals homeless and unemployed. In its aftermath, community volunteers formed the grassroots Kaua‘i Food Bank and distributed more than 5 million pounds of emergency food directly to the hurricane victims.
In 1994, the Kaua‘i Food Bank was formally established in Hawai‘i. Up until that point, the organization had been operating under the Hawai‘i Food Bank, an O‘ahu-based non-profit.
Today the Kaua‘i Food Bank employs seven full-time staff members with a support program of community volunteers. It also solicits and distributes more than 475,000 pounds of food annually to feed more than 633,000 meals to needy people.
Since the economic downturn in 2008, the Kaua‘i Food Bank has seen a 25 percent increase in demand for services with more than 5,000 requests for emergency food services each month.
This equates to about 8 percent of the island’s population with almost half of those being served to children and 15 percent are elderly.
For more information, visit www.kauaifoodbank.org
