The staff of HisWay Food Pantry and Dana Barksdale of Food Lion smile in front of newly stocked food pantry shelves. The pantry won a Great Pantry Makeover from the Food Lion Feeds foundation.
HisWay Food Pantry opened early one Monday morning in October for a special delivery. Volunteers unloaded 80 cases of nonperishable food items outside the pantry at Calvary Temple Assembly of God. Boxes of oatmeal, bags of flour, jars of jam, cans of vegetables and other pantry staples quickly filled the empty shelves.
“This will probably last us two weeks,” said food bank director Cory Toro. “We serve at least 100 families every Tuesday, so for us and for the church this is a huge blessing because this is normally something that we would pay for.”
As part of Food Lion Feeds annual Great Pantry Makeover, four Golden Harvest Food Bank partner agencies received pantry restocks this year: HisWay, McDuffie Manna, The Dream Center and The Storehouse at Vineyard Church of Augusta. Local Food Lion stores set up delivery times and sent managers and employees to deliver the much-needed food items.
Pantry volunteers were excited to see baking and cooking ingredients that families would need to make a holiday meal – like flour, oil and yams – among the food items lining the shelves.“This is stuff that we usually don’t get and with the holidays coming up, it’ll be great,” Toro said. “We’re looking at this and seeing complete meals that we can put together in a box.”
The pantry restocks are just one of the many ways local Food Lion stores support Golden Harvest’s mission of Feeding Lives Together. The stores hold food and funds drives throughout the year and Barksdalarksdale employees have helped renovate partner agencies. In October, the Food Lion on Windsor Spring sponsored a SNAP Challenge that donated hundreds of dollars of food to families in need through the Richmond County Success Center.
“We have great pride in feeding our neighbors and our community who are in need,” said manager Dana Barksdale. “We have a sense of pride in going out and helping as many people as we can.”
