I wanted to write part of this week’s article on Second Harvest Food Bank of the Lehigh Valley and Northeast Pennsylvania. This is to inform you what it does for the community and for Whitehall-Coplay Hunger Initiative. The information comes directly from the website, shfblv.org.

“It is our mission is to obtain food and distribute it to people in need through area nonprofits and to provide resources for education and advocacy to end hunger,” the website states.

“In October 1982, the Community Action Committee of the Lehigh Valley Inc. created the Lehigh Valley Food Bank. Starting with a network of about 15 agencies in Lehigh and Northampton counties, what has come to be known as Second Harvest Food Bank today serves 200 agencies in a six-county area: Carbon, Lehigh, Monroe, Northampton, Pike and Wayne. From the beginning, the twofold objective of SHFB was the distribution of food to needy people and the elimination of waste in the food industry. To discourage food industry waste, SHFB seeks donations of unsaleable but edible product from local companies,” the website continues.

Second Harvest receives funding from federal, state and local governments, along with private donations from the general public. WCHI and other food pantries in Lehigh County benefit from food purchased by Second Harvest with Lehigh County funding.

WCHI has three accounts with SHFB. I wanted to inform you of the poundage of food we obtained and the value of the food received in 2021. The food that WCHI orders is free to us.

WCHI could never serve as many households and residents as we do without our partnership with SHFB. A huge shout-out thank you goes to all the employees of Second Harvest. They all have been wonderful to work with.

The soup kitchen account is for our children’s summer feeding program and our free community meals. While most faith-based partners do not request food from WCHI to prepare the bimonthly meals, some sites do need some food items. Food for the children’s feeding program makes up 99 percent of this amount. WCHI ordered 22,344 pounds of food, for a value of $22,977.

WCHI fully administers the Snack Pack Pals program with assistance from Whitehall-Coplay School District and St. Elizabeth Regional School, Fullerton. We had food items left over from the summer feeding program that we used for Snack Pack Pals. Therefore, we did not order as many items as we normally would. Total food ordered was 1,628 pounds, for a value of $2,062.

Our food pantry public attendance has more than doubled in one year, and I reported our numbers last week. For 2021, WCHI ordered 122,297 pounds of food, with a value of $133,068. WCHI does not have this kind of cash on hand.

Second Harvest is not a grocery store, and not all items are available every week.

Second Harvest provides WCHI 100 percent of our refrigerator and frozen foods and 97 percent of our fresh produce. The remaining 3 percent of produce comes from our WCHI garden and the Knights of Columbus at Holy Trinity Roman Catholic Church, Egypt. This 3 percent was used for our summer feeding program. The rest was all given to our pantry guests.

I put out requests for items WCHI needs that Second Harvest does not have. Our community has been so generous in supplying many of the items we need. You can see these items at tinyurl.com/WCHIPantryList.

Note: Refrigerated, frozen, perishable or homemade items will not be accepted due to food safety liability reasons.

Thank you all for your continued support to accomplish our mission - to alleviate food insecurity in Whitehall and Coplay. Have a great week!