posted on Tuesday, June 26, 2018
"We are a collection of seven churches of varying denominations in the Southland School District," said Kathy Voigt, secretary at Little Cedar Lutheran Church, which houses the Southland Faith Community Food Shelf. "After realizing that there was a need for a food pantry or bank of some sort in the area, the community took it upon themselves to take action and here we are ten years later."
While the food shelf relies on some support from a large food bank in Rochester, most of their meat comes from local support.
"We actually don't receive any of our meat from Rochester," explained Kathy. "Everything we receive is generously donated by community members. All of the pork and beef is from local farmers and now it looks like the donations from local agriculture are going to continue with Iowa Select Farms!"
Every other Monday the Southland Faith Community Food Shelf opens its doors to local families and even does some door-to-door deliveries for the elderly. Collectively, the food shelf reaches 30-45 families in the Southland School District and relies on the help and support of 18 volunteers every two weeks.
“Our volunteers are very supportive of the food shelf and our community,” said Chairman, Dave Weness. “We wouldn’t be able to do it without them.”
In addition to assisting clients and helping unload deliveries, volunteers at the food shelf help organize bags of pre-packed items, ranging from cereal, peanut butter and pasta to milk and meat.
“We are fortunate to have such strong support from our community,” said Pastor Jeremy Johnson. “From the K-12 school kids to the post office and Boy Scout troop, most of our donations come from local groups. It's heartwarming to see how seriously the kids take it when they're collecting donations and when they show up here with the items that they've collected... the smiles on their faces are priceless."
Thank you to Kathy, Dave, Pastor Jeremy and all of the volunteers at the Southland Faith Community Foodshelf. We appreciate all that you do for your community, and especially appreciated your help unloading the 48 pork loins we donated today!
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