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Second Harvest uses grant to buy 1,500 chickens for 8,000 Thanksgiving meals
YOUNGSTOWN
Second Harvest Food Bank of the Mahoning Valley took delivery of 1,500 chickens, provided via a $10,000 Charter One Foundation grant, to help thousands of tri-county area residents have a healthy meal this Thanksgiving season.
Charter One employees volunteered Wednesday to help repack donated food and load the vans and trucks that boxes of food to Second Harvest’s 153-member agencies for distribution in Mahoning, Columbiana and Trumbull counties. The chickens will help make up more than 8,000 meals.
“Helping others is part of what Charter One does and what I do as a person,” said one of the volunteers, Kennie Croskey of Salem, who works at Charter One’s Boardman office.
“We [at Charter One] have a credo. We care about our customers and the communities in which they live,” Croskey said.
This year’s donation from Charter One to Second Harvest is part of a $100,000 commitment to food banks across Ohio. The Charter One Foundation, through its Carve Out Hunger program, has donated more than $1 million over the last 10 years to holiday food programs in the Mahoning Valley, Cleveland, Toledo and Akron-Canton areas.
Some 15,000 people a week are served through Second Harvest-assisted hunger-relief organizations, which include church pantries, homeless shelters, soup kitchens, shelters for battered women, and after-school programs.
The number of people seeking help has stayed about the same as 2013, but the faces and names have changed, said Michael Iberis, Second Harvest executive director.
“We’re seeing a larger number of working poor ... people who have low-paying part- or full-time jobs without benefits. It’s poverty that is driving their need,” Iberis said.
He noted that in 2013, 63.3 percent of Youngstown children lived in poverty, second-worst in the U.S.; and that Youngstown’s poverty rate overall is sixth-worst in the nation.
“I can’t imagine being a parent or grandparent who has to look a child in the face and tell them there is not enough food for the day. It would be gut-wrenching,” Iberis said.
This is what drives the incredible generosity of this community, despite the long-depressed economy, he said.
For information about Second Harvest Food Bank of the Mahoning Valley, including how to get food and how to conduct food drives and fundraising activities, visit www.mahoningvalleysecondharvest.org or call 330-792-5522.