Berea College’s Students For Appalachia (SFA) is conducting its 13th annual Hunger Hurts food drive Oct. 23 – 29. All food collected will go to the Berea Food Bank.

The volunteer-run Food Bank, located in the basement of First Christian Church, supplies emergency food for hundreds of Berea families in need each year. While the supply is maintained throughout the year by various food drives and individual donations, the SFA Hunger Hurts food drive is the single largest provider for the Food Bank.

This year is expected to be especially hard due to the high projected gas prices, which will unfortunately cause some families to have to choose between paying for utilities and paying for food. This challenge is where the Hunger Hurts food drive comes in.

From Sunday, October 23rd through Thursday, Oct. 27, SFA volunteers will be dropping off Hunger Hurts paper bags on the front porches of local Bereans. This is where the citizens of Berea can help, because the next step is for the bags to be filled with non-perishable food and returned to the front porches where they will be picked up by teams on Saturday, October 29th, and brought to the Food Bank. Volunteers will meet for pick-up at 8:30am on the ground floor of the Woods-Penniman building at Berea College, and sorting will begin soon afterwards at First Christian Church (206 Chestnut St.) and continue until 2:30pm.

Last fall, the Hunger Hurts food drive collected over five tons of food, and that portion is almost completely depleted now. SFA hopes to exceed that amount this year. Food items especially needed are pasta products, cold and hot cereals, peanut butter and jelly, canned soups, all sorts of canned goods, and cooking products such as flour, cornmeal, and oil.

If you would like to volunteer or have any questions, call SFA at (859) 985-3935 and ask for Sheila or Betty.

Help kick hunger in our community this fall!