Each year OSU conducts a food drive competition during the month of February to support Linn Benton Food Share, the regional food bank for Linn and Benton Counties. Linn Benton Food Share prevents hunger by soliciting, transporting, storing and distributing over five million pounds of food each year to 70 area agencies such as emergency food pantries, soup kitchens, emergency shelters, child and senior care centers, shelter homes and gleaning groups. According to Linn Benton Food Share, “one of every six families in Linn and Benton Counties must depend on food from an emergency food pantry at least once each year. With the current economic crisis, the need for assistance has increased 25% in the last year.”
To encourage College participation this year, there is an enthusiastic and dedicated committee in place to coordinate the CVM effort and they are determined (with your help!) to beat last year’s donations which amounted to 12,000 lbs.! Committee members are: Kristi Crofoot, Melanie Garrett, Dr. Jana Gordon, Pat Hutson, Steve Lehto, Ryan Mitchell, Robyn Panico, Debrah Rarick, Mandy Seals, and Lindy Young (additional members welcome any time!). Dr. Gordon is chair of the committee.
This year the committee is promoting a competition between the faculty/staff and the students! Watch for food drive boxes marked for either faculty/staff or students’ donations. There will also be at least one fundraiser event each week, starting with a soup sale on Tuesday, February 2 and a Valentine’s Day bake sale on Friday, February 12. Tickets for a soon-to-be-announced grand prize drawing will be sold throughout the month.
Please plan on participating in this worthy cause and help the College of Veterinary Medicine move up in the OSU rankings for units of 100+ people. We may not beat Forestry (40,000+ lbs last year) but COAS (Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences) is within our reach at 15,800 lbs!
