CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA (CVILLE RIGHT NOW) – The need for food donations may be at an all-time high, but so is giving.
The Blue Ridge Food Bank’s ‘Stamp Out Hunger’ drive on May 9 resulted in the largest collection total since before the pandemic.
“It is absolutely incredible and just really speaks to the heart of this community,” BRAFB Volunteer and Food Drive Manager Jennifer Rafter told Cville Right Now. “We are so grateful for everyone who has supported this and I think this just shows really what’s in people’s hearts at the moment wanting to help our neighbors.”
Postal workers throughout the 25-county area BRAFB serves collected 120,692 pounds of food, and contributors gave an addition $6,401 in the effort’s online collection.
Rafter was overwhelmed that despite higher food prices being not only a challenge to their visitors, but to contributors as well, that’s the most pounds collected since 2019.
The 120,000-plus pounds of food enables provision of more than 119,780 meals, according to Rafter, and every dollar contributed monetarily is worth three meals.
The math works out to more than 19,000 meals for the $6401 donated, Rafter calculated.
The Charlottesville post office collected 7647 pounds of food, while Waynesboro collected 13,903.
The most was collected in Winchester at 38,561 pounds and Lynchburg at 30,599.
“We continue to see the highest need in our community that our food bank has ever seen in our 45-year history,” Rafter said. “Every month on average we are (supporting) 177,000 guest visits, and we’re just reaching record numbers of Virginians thankfully through a network of over 400 community partners.”
Rafter credited the hard work of letter carriers, many putting in extra time, as well as volunteers in collecting the food, packaging it, then getting it to the warehouses throughout the service area.
“The location I was at, one of the letter carriers, it was actually her day off, and she is someone who has previously experienced food insecurity in her life,” Rafter said. “Despite it being her day off, she went around three times and filled her vehicle collecting food from mailboxes to ensure our neighbors would have enough to eat.”
Rafter said, at this time, the food has arrived at their four warehouse locations, and the product is going out now to their 400 partner agencies.
