Want to help?
• If you missed the Walk & Knock food collection Saturday morning, don’t despair. Numerous local businesses and nonprofit agencies are serving as drop-off sites through Tuesday. You can find a list of donation sites on the Walk & Knock website, www.walkandknock.org/one/volunteer_barrels.htm
• Financial donations can also be mailed to the Clark County Food Bank, 6502 N.E. 47th Ave., Vancouver, WA 98661 or can be made online at www.walkandknock.org/one/donate.htm. All donations will be used to purchase food.
An estimated 1 of every 4 children in Clark County goes to bed hungry. Thousands of volunteers who scoured neighborhoods on a rainy Saturday morning hope to change that statistic — at least for a few months.
For the 28th year, volunteers fanned out across the county to collect bags of food and cash donations for the community’s largest one-day food drive, Walk & Knock.
Want to help?
• If you missed the Walk & Knock food collection Saturday morning, don't despair. Numerous local businesses and nonprofit agencies are serving as drop-off sites through Tuesday. You can find a list of donation sites on the Walk & Knock website, <a href="http://www.walkandknock.org/one/volunteer_barrels.htm">www.walkandknock.org/one/volunteer_barrels.htm</a>
• Financial donations can also be mailed to the Clark County Food Bank, 6502 N.E. 47th Ave., Vancouver, WA 98661 or can be made online at <a href="http://www.walkandknock.org/one/donate.htm">www.walkandknock.org/one/donate.htm</a>. All donations will be used to purchase food.
Volunteers walked house to house to collect the goods. After filling their cars with donations, they delivered the food to one of numerous sorting centers. There, volunteers unloaded vehicles while more volunteers emptied bags and boxed up the items. The boxes were then loaded into trucks and later delivered to the Clark County Food Bank.
The Food Bank will redistribute everything to 32 satellite food pantries and other emergency food sites — all within our community. The donations should stock Food Bank shelves for several months, organizers said.
Walkers hit the streets at about 9 a.m. By 9:30 a.m., cars with stuffed trunks and trucks with beds full of food were pulling into the sorting station at Wy’east Middle School. High school students made up the majority of volunteers at the Vancouver school.
“It’s really fun, actually,” said Faith Jenkins, an Evergreen High School junior, as she packed boxes. “I like the systematicness of it.”
Faith and other members of the Evergreen High School Key Club manned one of the tables at the school. As donation bags came in, they sorted the items, pulling out perishable items, toiletries and pet supplies. Those items all still go to the Food Bank, said Becky Writt, Walk & Knock treasurer, they’re just boxed separately from the nonperishable food items that can sit in the warehouse for a couple of months.
“Key Club is all about community service, giving back to the community,” Faith said. “And this is an excellent opportunity to do that.”
At another sorting table, Savannah Ard, a senior at Mountain View High School and a member of the National Honor Society, unloaded donation bags. This was the second year Savannah volunteered at the Walk & Knock sorting center. When she was younger, she walked door to door to collect donations.
“It’s always been a fun event to go to,” she said. “To serve people is a joy.”
Serving people is especially important this time of year, Savannah said, when some people in the community may be struggling.
“It reminds you why we celebrate Christmas,” she said, “the importance of others.”
The members of Cub Scout Pack 320 — 17 Cub Scouts and about a dozen adults — spent their morning checking nearby neighborhoods for donations. This was the fifth year Pack 320 has participated in the event.
“It lets them see not everyone has everything, and there are people who need assistance,” said Tom Dyer, Cubmaster.
The kids saw it as an opportunity to have some fun, too.
“I experienced something very fun,” said 10-year-old Branden Roberson. “I ran to one bag and tried to jump into a barrel roll.”
“It was kind of like Halloween, when you knock and they give you stuff,” said 10-year-old Essie Ehrismann, whose brother, Aidan, is a Cub Scout.
Halen Dyer, 10, said he enjoyed leaving fliers on the doors of those who weren’t home. The fliers included information for donating to the Clark County Food Bank.
Even though the kids had fun, they didn’t lose sight of why they were there.
“To help people that don’t have food,” Halen said.
The annual food drive takes place on the first Saturday in December. Last year, 128 tons of food were collected on Walk & Knock day. The all-time record is 162 tons collected in 2009.
