(BEDFORD) – The community donated over 8,347 items during this year’s “Stuff A Bus” event located at the Bedford Jay-C Store location.
The donations help the L.I.F.E. Food Pantry who have been providing for Lawrence County families in their time of need.
During the year, L.I.F.E is supported by more than 40 churches throughout Lawrence County.
“The pastors and churches got together hoping to help more people; sometimes just the same people were getting help. Those that needed help were falling through the cracks and the churches wanted to better track the assistance they were giving out,” said Donnie Hall, Co-director of L.I.F.E.
The churches support the agency financially to help them carry out that mission.
In addition, L.I.F.E. sponsors “Life Blessings” in which each student is given a bag of nutritional food on Fridays to take home to help with food insecurity.
“This program makes sure students are not only fed during the school week, but also on the weekends,” said Hall.
L.I.F.E. provides emergency food assistance every thirty days in addition to emergency rent or mortgage/utility assistance.
“During the COVID-19 pandemic, the group did not have any volunteers for the last six months to make sure everyone was safe. We only utilized paid staff during those months. One full-time and two part-time employees did most of the work during that period of time. In the last couple of months we have been able to bring a few volunteers back,” said Hall.
Over the last couple of months things have started getting really busy for both the Bedford and Mitchell locations.
“The community has really supported our organization and for that we are grateful for the support we have been given,” said Hall.
The pantry delivers more than 12,000 items each month to families in need.
Services report from L.I.F.E.:
- Families Assisted – 1,943
- Food Given -115,756
- Food Donated – 139,246
- Homeless served – 71
- New Clients – 108 families
- Volunteers – 174
- Volunteer hours – 3,484 hours
Thanks to the following sponsors who have made this year’s event a huge success:
- Rogers Group
- Jay-C Food Store
- Sipes Body & Glass
- Ringer & Daniels
- Air-Master Heating & Air Conditioning
- Thomas Insurance Services
- Hoosier Hills Credit Union
- Shoe Sensation
- Fibertech
- Tri-Star Engineering
- Golden Corral
- HFI Mechanical
- Family Drug & Health Mart
- Animal Care Clinic
- Day & Carter Mortuary Inc.
- Smoot Eye Care
- Mitchell Manor
1340 AM WBIW, 105.5 WQRK, and 102.5 WPHZ are also proud sponsors of this event.
