We had wonderful weather for our May 13 food distribution.

Though our attendance numbers were very similar to April, we registered 22 new households! We served 81 Whitehall and 34 Coplay households, comprised of 124 children, 191 adults and 68 seniors for a total of 383 people served.

Thank you to all our volunteers and Second Harvest Food Bank and for all the generous food and monetary donations that make this all possible. This is community helping community!

Our next food distribution is June 10. Encourage your Whitehall and Coplay neighbors, friends and family to take advantage of the free food, even though extra federal money is going on the P-EBT cards.

As COVID-19 winds down, Second Harvest inventory will also start to decrease; therefore, our food inventory also will decline. Take advantage of the food we have on hand and stock your shelves now with the staples we can give you. Dry food lasts a long time past the freshness date on the package.

Whitehall-Coplay Hunger Initiative’s mission is to alleviate food insecurity for Whitehall and Coplay residents. As you are aware, there are many Whitehall and Coplay children who rely on the free and reduced-rate meals provided by the school district during the school year.

To feed these low- to moderate-income children over the summer, WCHI will open five Whitehall and one Coplay drop-and-go bag sites to provide food for every child in the household - toddler to age 18.

Note: We do not have resources to feed every child living in the school district but will provide food while supplies last.

School ends June 14. Our program will start June 16, and distributions are planned for 10-11 a.m. every Monday and Wednesday until Aug. 25.

We will need a little time before each distribution to load cars with bagged food.

With an operation of this scale, we need more volunteers to help distribute food. Everyone is welcome to attend our next meeting 6 p.m. May 27 at our pantry at St. John the Baptist Church, in the Christ the King School cafeteria, 3024 S. Ruch St., Whitehall.

We are encouraging students ages 12-17 to help with the program to earn community service hours. Some Whitehall-Coplay School District and Catholic school personnel are already talking with me to provide a flier for them to share with their students. Do you know a student who needs service hours?

We also need adults to help with this summer program. You do not need to work every distribution, but many hands lighten the load. We do require child abuse clearances for all our programs. You may have most of these already if you work in education, health care, etc.

Please review our required clearances at whitehallcoplayhungerinitiative.org/volunteer-forms.html.

If interested, you can sign up on our volunteer portal at whitehallcoplayhungerinitiative.org/volunteer-signup.html. Once obtained, these clearances are good for five years.

This week’s food requests include regular-sized cereal boxes, granola/cereal bars with five to eight bars per box, 18-ounce plastic jars of jelly, boxes of oatmeal packets with six to 10 packets per box, 24-ounce pancake syrup, small boxes of raisins, diced peach cups, Mandarin orange cups, Quaker Fruit & Cream hot cereal, Quaker instant oatmeal variety pack, Jumex tropical punch, Apple & Eve apple juice, Nutri Grain variety pack bars, canned dog food and medium-sized adult diapers.

All donations are appreciated and may be shipped to or dropped off at Re/Max Unlimited Real Estate, 1080 Schadt Ave., Whitehall, 18052.

Leave your donations inside the foyer on the right, 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Mondays-Fridays, 9 a.m.-1 p.m. Saturdays and 10 a.m.-1 p.m. Sundays. Thank you, and have a great week!