Just a quick reminder that Boscov’s Friends Helping Friends program is this week. For any purchases you make Oct. 14 and 15, tell the cashier you want Whitehall-Coplay Hunger Initiative to receive the 5-percent Friends donation on your total purchase. Please make sure they note this. Boscov’s will mail us a check the following week.

Tell your family and friends about this, too!

Our last WCHI community outreach program distribution will be Oct. 22.

The most recent community outreach program distribution was Oct. 8. These are the last three distribution numbers for both the Whitehall and Coplay locations combined.

Sept. 10

Children: 209

Adults: 232

Seniors: 65

Total people: 506

Households: 144

Sept. 24

Children: 238

Adults: 257

Seniors: 83

Total people: 578

Households: 165

Oct. 8

Children: 213

Adults: 233

Seniors: 79

Total people: 525

Households: 162

As soon as we can open our new food pantry, I will let you know. We are hopeful this can happen before the end of this year. If anyone would like to volunteer to help, sign up on our volunteer page on our website, tinyurl.com/y4ehwzwj. State and church child abuse clearances are required.

A big shout-out also goes to Second Harvest Food Bank.

According to the Second Harvest newsletter mailed this week, “Collectively, Second Harvest Network serves 60,000 people each month. More than half of the people served are children and seniors. We distributed 11.8 million pounds of food last year, including 1.3 million pounds of fresh produce. Our food comes from grocery stores, food manufacturers, government sources and community-supported food drives. We rescue 11.8 tons of food a day that would otherwise end up in a landfill.”

Second Harvest also takes part in numerous public programs.

“Backpack Buddies provides a supply of food to get kids through the weekend until they return to school on Monday. Sunshine Boxes improve the health and nutrition of low-income seniors by providing them with a box of groceries. SNAP outreach helps people apply for SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) benefits over the phone. MilitaryShare provides military families with pantry staples and fresh groceries,” the newsletter continued.

Please visit Second Harvest’s food access section at shfblv.org/food-access to read more about these four programs mentioned above. Its network of more than 200 nonprofit agencies over six counties typically serves 60,000 people each month. During the COVID-19 crisis, that rose to 79,000 people.

We order food from Second Harvest every week to support our distributions. We received 65,833 pounds of food March 22-Sept. 2, at a cost of $6,407.76.

The public’s monetary donations helped to pay for this food, plus other food items not on the Second Harvest order form. We also received approximately 15,000 pounds of donated food dropped off at my office during this same time period.

Again, I would like to thank all the many volunteers who have helped us the last six months and all of you who have made monetary and product donations. We could not do this program without your generous and much-appreciated support.