SCBO 2022 Food Drive a Rousing Success
by Nancy McCluskey-Moore
Since 1998, SaddleBrooke Community Outreach (SBCO) has held a food drive to help prevent hunger and poor nutrition among residents of local communities. Each year SaddleBrooke and SaddleBrooke Ranch residents generously donate money, food and time to make the annual event a great success. This year, due to Covid, the food drive only accepted monetary donations between February 19th and March 19th. Nevertheless, the drive to fight hunger brought in a whopping $191,618 in contributions. A total of 1682 individuals contributed to this year’s food drive.
The food drive benefits the Tri-Community Food Bank (TCFB) which serves residents of Dudleyville, Mammoth, San Manuel and Oracle. Due to generosity of SaddleBrooke and SaddleBrooke Ranch residents, TCFB is able to make an enormous difference in the lives of the people who live in their service area. In recent months, TCFB has been able to build a new warehouse with ample space to store monthly deliveries of multiple large pallets of non-perishable food. This facility is equipped with electrical service for lighting and a thermostatically controlled fan. Located directly behind the Food Bank building, this warehouse forms a courtyard with a new outdoor walk-in cooler and freezer. These facility upgrades dramatically improve TCFB’s ability to provide nutritious meals to those in need
Rosemary Douglas, a member of the Tri-Community Food Bank (TCFB) board of directors executive committee , stated, “The wonderful response to the 2022 SBCO food drive is a tremendous boost for the food bank. The money raised will help to meet the needs of our 300 client families – 900 people – for more than a year. The Board of TCFB and the people we serve are very grateful to the generous SaddleBrooke and SaddleBrooke Ranch residents who supported this annual event. We are here to provide hope, so it is wonderful for our clients to know that others care about them.”
SBCO thanks the volunteers who served on the food drive committee and as unit captains, unit coordinators, and office staff for their work collecting and processing donations. Most importantly, we offer a huge “thank you” to both communities for their generous support of this event.
