Community Corner
Boy Scout Food Drive Coming to Area Homes
The Boy Scouts annual Scouting for Food drive will take place from Feb. 11-18 and will encompass 40,000 homes in the southeastern part of Hillsborough County.
Boy Scouts will deliver 40,000 bags to homes throughout Brandon, Valrico, FishHawk Ranch, Plant City and Riverview this Saturday as part of their annual Scouting for Food drive to help Feeding America Tampa Bay.
Around 60 scout units will participate in the event fulfilling their "service to others" activity. Scouts will drop the bags off this Saturday and return to pick them up in a week's time, hopefully finding them packed with food. The goal this year is to collect 20,000 pounds worth of food.
"We're all well aware that there is a great need in our community, so we use this as a way of teaching the kids about helping the community," said Molly Blanton, district executive for the Timucua district. "Part of the scouting program is discussing and exploring the importance of helping the community and identifying what agencies can help us do that. It's very informative from that perspective for the scouts."
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Walt McNight, a scout leader for more than 30 years, helps organize the area's scouts in effectively collecting the food and organizing for the receiving food banks.
"I assign areas for the different scout units to collect food," the 64-year old Brandon resident said. "Seeing the food come in and getting it sorted has always been my favorite part of doing this. We've been up to 18,000 pounds of food before, but this year it would be great if we could get to 20,000. We've got about 750 scouts working on it, so anything is possible."
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The non-perishable food is donated to established, recognized food banks and is matched with perishable items on an as needed basis by Feeding America. The Emergency Care Help Organization (ECHO) is the primary recipient in the area of the food collected.
"The bulk of the food goes to ECHO and is a major help to them," Blanton said. "They go through a lot before the holidays and then during the spring there is another food drive done by the letter carriers but in between is a long gap. So this is a important event for the food banks."
Find more information about the Scouting For Food drive at boyscouting.com.
