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March is Minnesota FoodShare Fundraising Campaign Drive. This also starts the Emily Area's 2014 Annual Food Shelf Fundraiser. During this month, large corporations, individuals and foundations will make contributions to the Minnesota Food Share program at the state level. This money will be allocated to Minnesota food shelves throughout the year. This additional monetary incentive allocation will be made to the Emily Food Shelf based on the number of pounds of collected items and dollars raised in the Emily area during the month of March. All food items and monetary donations raised in our local area will stay in our area, to help provide food to the families of Emily, Outing, Fifty Lakes, Little Pine, Ross Lake and Fairfield townships.

Hunger Solutions is another program that helps Minnesota food shelves throughout the year, based on the amount of food and money that the individual food shelf raises during the March FoodShare Campaign. The Allen Shaw Feinstein Foundation sponsors another incentive program. They will divide $1 million among nonprofit agencies throughout the U.S. to help fight hunger, and are using this offer to help raise funds during the months of March and April, 2014. The more food and money donations that are made, the larger the check will be coming back from the Feinstein Foundation. Again, all items and money collected will be kept in the community.

Area churches, local fire departments, service organizations and businesses will be asked to participate in the community wide collection. Items being sought are nonperishable food products such as peanut butter, canned meats and tuna, cold cereals, household paper and cleaning products, laundry soaps, and personal bath products such as soaps, shampoo and conditioner. Designated collection sites for these items are the Emily, Outing and Fifty Lakes area churches and the Emily Ace Hardware Store.

With the greatly appreciated monetary donations the Emily Food Shelf is able to purchase food items, household and personal supplies from the Second Harvest Food Bank in Grand Rapids, at a fraction of the regular cost. This way donated money can be stretched to go further and purchase more food items from the Food Bank. The Emily-Outing-Fifty Lakes Area Food Shelf served 794 families in 2013, feed over 2,200 individuals and distributed 93,846 pounds of food.

This campaign is the major fundraiser that the volunteer Emily Food Shelf workers will do for the year. Other donations will be gladly accepted at any time.

The food shelf is open on the third Wednesday of each month from 9:30 until 11:00 a.m. and the following day, Thursday, 5:30.-6:30 p.m. at the new site located at 20948 Co. Rd. #1(former Unity Bank). People wishing to make a financial donation may make checks payable to "Emily Food Shelf" and leave at the Pine River Bank, in Emily or send them to: 42145 Birchwood Drive, Emily, MN 56447. Questions concerning the Emily Food Shelf or fundraising projects may be directed to the site director, Nancy Moritz at 763-3097.[[In-content Ad]]

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