Whitehall-Coplay Hunger Initiative volunteers and guests had a beautiful day Feb. 10 for the last pantry distribution.

Our guest attendance was very similar to January. WCHI served 213 households, comprised of 784 residents - 325 children, 343 adults and 116 seniors. We also registered 26 new households.

A big shout-out of thanks to our wonderful volunteers, Second Harvest Food Bank and the general public, who provide monetary funds and food/toiletry products to give to our guests.

Also, thank you to all of you who have been doing food drives for WCHI, including students, teachers and staff, businesses, clubs and faith-based organizations. We are so appreciative of your continued support and generosity!

The Feeding America network is the nation’s largest domestic hunger-relief organization, working to connect people with food and end hunger. Feeding America has a nationwide network of about 200 food banks, including Second Harvest.

Food banks are nonprofit organizations that source and store foods within a large warehouse, which they can then distribute through a network of food pantries and meal programs that serve families, children, seniors and individuals facing food insecurity.

Second Harvest’s network is composed of about 200 agencies in a six-county area - Lehigh, Northampton, Carbon, Monroe, Pike and Wayne counties. WHCI is one of these agencies within Lehigh County.

I am pleased to announce very exciting news for WCHI. Second Harvest is collaborating with three food pantries in Lehigh County within the Healthy Pantry Initiative grant: Allentown Ecumenical Food Pantry, Northern Lehigh Food Pantry and Whitehall-Coplay Hunger Initiative.

What is the Healthy Pantry Initiative? This is a project of Feeding Pennsylvania, the statewide association of nine Feeding America-affiliated food banks. Funding is provided by SNAP-Ed.

The initiative’s goals are to increase access to healthy food within the food pantries and increase consumption of healthy food by pantry guests through various promotional methods and materials.

There are so many great aspects that will favorably impact all our WCHI program recipients - our pantry guests, our Snack Pack Pals children and our children’s summer feeding program children.

Many more future newspaper articles and email blasts will be forthcoming from me on this exciting new initiative. WCHI is extremely honored to be selected as of one of about 52 healthy pantries in Pennsylvania and one of three in Lehigh County.

Have a great week!