NU FFA and Food Shelf come together to stop hunger
April 4, 2018
The New Ulm High School’s FFA sponsored a food drive that let students donate food. The donations are sent to the New Ulm Food Shelf for the people in need of food. The food drive started the 12th of March and ended the 29th of March. When each student brought in an item they could write their name down on a slip of paper to be entered in a weekly drawing. The prize of the drawings is a $10 amazon gift card.
We talked to one of the food donation prize winners, Hannah Altmann, who said she donated eight cans of corn last week. When we asked her what made her donate food she said, “To do a good thing and help people that can’t afford it.” Hannah is a senior at the New Ulm High School. This is the second week of the food drive, and Hannah was the lucky winner who won a $10 amazon gift card. When asked what Hannah was going to use the gift card for, she said, “Possibly buy something for my dog or a phone case.”
We went to the food drive to find out the impact our school and other organizations really had on the community. There we interviewed Brad Kirk, who said, “Everything helps. The donations from your schools, from the churches around town, and even the drop boxes at places like Cash Wise, everything helps.” He went on to say that we have one of the best food shelves in the state. “This town is very kind any very generous. With all the help we get from donations we don’t need any help from the county. So I guess I just want to say thanks to your school for all the support.”
Many people think negatively towards places like the food shelf because they’re concerned about government spending, but New Ulm’s food shelf is run entirely on donations with no help from the county. Our FFA has been contributing to our county with the annual food drive for 21 years. With their help, the food shelf is able to help an average of 170 families a month.
New Ulm’s food drive, with the exception of one employee, is run entirely by volunteers. The volunteers come into the food shelf and are all assigned a different part of the assembly line in order to have an efficient process. The process starts when you first walk in at the front desk. Information is exchanged concerning family income and size. If the family qualifies, the volunteers will use the information to put together a corresponding product box. Each family gets bread, milk, canned fruits and vegetables, and some form of meat.
While waiting for your items to be put together and bagged, there are a number of goodies, such as cookies, donuts and cakes, and certain toiletries such as make-up, shampoo, and toothpaste that you can choose from. Not wanting to waste donations, if something, such as bread, expires they often donate it to local animal shelters and rescues.
