Whitehall-Coplay Hunger Initiative’s brand-new food pantry officially opens with a ribbon-cutting ceremony 10:45 a.m. Jan. 14.

Promptly after the ceremony, we will start disbursing food to our guests. Distributions are 11 a.m.-1 p.m. and 5:30-7 p.m.

The board of directors and everyone involved are so excited and thrilled to open this week.

The last few weeks have been extremely busy ordering everything needed to set up the pantry, including rolling shelving units, folding tables and chairs, pop-up tents for our outside distributions in case it is raining, shopping carts, tote boxes and more.

Second Harvest Food Bank, along with the public’s generous food and monetary donations, has provided more than 7,500 pounds of food for this week’s distribution.

Thank you to all the volunteers who helped put the shelving together, brought in truckloads of food and sorted, shelved and packed the food bags. We could not do this operation without you all. You know who you are!

And a big thank you to Joe Paul and Neal Reenock, of St. John the Baptist Church, who helped us several times last week with property items in the pantry.

Our refrigerators and freezer arrived last week only to make a return road trip back to Lansdale. The men forgot their equipment to bring the items down the steps into our pantry. They will be delivered again soon.

Unfortunately, no freezer or refrigerator items could be ordered for this distribution. Don’t worry, we will have them for our February distribution.

Our pantry, as with all food pantries, could not run without all the wonderful and selfless volunteers. We are fortunate to have so many caring people to help feed our Whitehall and Coplay food-insecure residents.

If you are interested in joining our volunteer team for any of our many outreach programs - most of which are on hold due to COVID-19 - sign up at whitehallcoplayhungerinitiative.org/volunteer.html.

The required items are being updated and will be available this week at whitehallcoplayhungerinitiative.org/forms.html.

In next week’s column, I will let you know how many households, adults, seniors and children we had the pleasure to serve. I also will give you a list of food item requests we will need for the Feb. 11 distribution.

Have a great week!