Scouting For Food – Helping Our Community

Annual Food Drive

Each year in November, the Boy Scouts of America holds its Scouting For Food event…one of the largest national food drive events. Communities are asked to help by donating items that can then be used to support food pantries in their area.

Scouts play a big role in this effort!

It starts on a Saturday morning with the distribution of donation bags to every home. Each BSA unit has a designated Scouting For Food support area. Ours covers a large portion of the Collinsville area, mostly focused on the East side of town. Since it is such a spread-out area, we not only rely on the help of all of our Scouts, but also on parents and adult leaders to help transport the Scouts to the homes in our area.

With a stack of bags in hand, the Scouts go from house to house, leaving a bag on each front door. Printed on the bag are details about the Scouting For Food event, including the type of items that are needed. The bags also indicate the date when the Scouts will return to collect the donated items.

7 days later, again on a Saturday morning, our troop re-visits the homes in our area, collecting all of the items that those in our community have generously donated for this effort.

Keeping It Local

One of the great parts about this food drive is that everything collected helps those in need in our area.

Over the years, we have taken the donated item to various food pantries, depending on who needed them the most. This year worked with the folks at the Caseyville Methodist Church.

By the time we were finished, we had collected over 3,500 items!

As you can imagine, sorting through that many items is no easy task. The church was well prepared with many volunteers ready to help. Many of our Scouts and parents also stayed after the event in order to help sort and organized the food.

A HUGE THANKS to everyone in our community who helped to make this year’s Scouting For Food event so successful!