LIHU‘E — A little girl tugged the sleeve of Kelvin Moniz, the Kaua‘i Independent Food Bank food resources director, during a food collection. “Our family needed food, and we went to your place,” the tiny girl said in a shy,
LIHU‘E — A little girl tugged the sleeve of Kelvin Moniz, the Kaua‘i Independent Food Bank food resources director, during a food collection.
“Our family needed food, and we went to your place,” the tiny girl said in a shy, subdued voice. “I was the little girl who was in the car. I saw you, but I don’t think you saw me.”
Moniz and the KIFB staff have been busy — they received donations from food collection drives at Elsie Wilcox Elementary School, Kilauea Elementary School and King Kaumuali‘i Elementary School. The drives concluded during the final week before winter break.
“Wow!” Moniz said. “This is unbelievable — Wilcox Elementary School collected 2,655 pounds of food, more than 3,300 items. Kilauea School collected 358 pounds of food and added a cash donation of $200, and King Kaumuali‘i School came up with more than 750 pounds of food.”
The activity from the elementary schools come with about a week remaining in the KIFB holiday drive, which ends Dec. 31.
Jonel Elias, a counselor at Wilcox School, agreed with Moniz’s statement.
“When we started the drive, we only had two boxes of food,” Elias said. “We set out to beat our record of last year and ended up collecting more than 3,300 pieces.”
Moniz told the Wilcox students its collection made it the biggest collection of all the schools on Kaua‘i, and only the second biggest single collection next to the Marriott ‘ohana, which came in at more than 10,000 pounds.
“This is amazing,” Moniz said. “The amount of food you students contributed will help KIFB feed people for about a month.”
Moniz said in addition to feeding people who are hungry, KIFB also works with the Boys & Girls Club in providing healthy snacks through the Keiki Cafe at the Waimea Clubhouse, and more recently, through the Lihu‘e B&G Club’s healthy snacks program, which was started during the summer. He said they also provide a backpack program for the B&G Kapa‘a Clubhouse as well as for two charter schools.
Frank Ranger, director of the KIFB, said the Nawiliwili facility, while normally referring needy people to participating agencies, prepares emergency food boxes for families.
Ranger said KIFB works through about 75 emergency food packages a month.
“Through the month of November, KIFB processed about 24,000 emergency food requests, bringing the Year to Date total to more than 302,000 requests,” Ranger said. “In November, there were 14,123 people being fed, including more than 6,700 children, 5,400 adults and more than two thousand kupuna, or elderly.”
Ranger said KIFB is anticipating finishing the year with about 150,000 people being fed, a decrease of about five percent from 2011.
The decrease is met with mixed feelings by KIFB staff.
“While we are glad more people are finding food security, we distributed more than 156,000 pounds of food in 2011,” Ranger said. “This year, while we’re going to feed five percent less, we are distributing with only about two-thirds of what we had available last year, or about 100,000 pounds of food.”
Ranger said the October and November months saw some of the most successful food collections, but there is still a need for more before the end of the KIFB holiday drive.
Kaua Hermosura, president of the Kilauea Elementary School student council, said they got the idea for a food collection when the student council fielded ideas for a school service project.
Amber Bein, the Kilauea student council secretary, said they decided to sell hard ice using 100 percent natural juice, which would be frozen in the teachers’ workroom freezer.
“We had sales from students, teachers and parents with the money going back to buying more juice,” Bein said. “Last year, the student council sold Icee, but this year, we wanted to go all natural.”
Bein said they sold an average of about two boxes of hard ice on each Friday and Tuesday with about $50 in proceeds being taken in at each outing, some of the funds going back to help the school in addition to the cash being presented to KIFB.
People can contribute nonperishable food items at any of the fire stations around the island, or at the KIFB facility located at 3285 Wa‘apa Road in Lihu‘e.
For those wishing to organize a food drive, call Moniz at 246-3809 ext. 102, or email kmoniz@kauaifoodbank.org.
Visit www.kauaifoodbank.org for more information.
