Good things happen, too

Tragedies make headlines. Good things are often reported in tiny paragraphs buried where people may not notice them. Here are a couple of recent successes in our community, providing assistance to hungry people:

The May 2007 Southwest Neighborhoods, Inc. (SWNI) newsletter reports on page 15 about the “SW Hope” project. Volunteers solicited donations of food for Neighborhood House from groups and individuals all over SW Portland. Sylvia Bogart, SWNI Executive Director, reports via the SWNI Newsletter:

“The call for help came, and people responded – in droves. With the final results still being tallied, a recently concluded community-driven food drive has raised more than double its original goal of 50,000 pounds or the cash equivalent for the Neighborhood House Emergency Food Box Program.

The community contributed approximately 15,700 pounds of food and about $8,935 in cash to “Southwest Hope: Feed the Hungry” over a span of several weeks. Every dollar raised can purchase 10 pounds of food from the Oregon Food Bank, bringing the equivalent total to about 105,031 pounds of food for hungry people who rely on Neighborhood House for help. “

[Note: It’s better to give money than to go out and buy cans of food for Oregon Food Bank donations, since they can purchase so much more with the money than you can – AF]

“We are totally overwhelmed,” said Neighborhood House Executive Director Rick Nitti. “I am staggered by the tremendously generous response to this concerted effort to help the hungry in our community.” Response has been so great the Emergency Food Box Program will be supplied for more than four months, enough to provide approximately 1,000 food boxes, Nitti said.

Volunteers placed food barrels at more than a dozen collection sites around Southwest, and 10 area restaurants sponsored “dine in” days where they gave a portion of their proceeds to the campaign.

“I got a good feeling personally to see the community show such a groundswell of support,” said Bonnie Gregory, a member of Christian Science Church. The food barrel at the US Bank on Barbur Boulevard was overflowing both times she went by to pick up donations, Gregory noted. “It’s wonderful that we exceeded our goal,” she said.”

In other good news, Alesia Reese calls my attention to reports that donations to the National Association of Letter Carriers’ (NALC) citywide food drive were up this year. The Oregon Food Bank press release says:

“In the Portland metro area, letter carriers collected 699,967 pounds of food, an increase of 18 percent over last year.

“What our letter carriers do on this one day is simply amazing,