Food drive asks donors to fill bag

Why was there a grocery bag in the newspaper Wednesday morning?

Good question, Walk & Knock newbie.

For 30 years, The Columbian has been inserting these bags in the newspaper before the first Saturday in December as part of the Walk & Knock food drive. It’s the largest annual food drive benefiting the Clark County Food Bank, which distributes 6 million pounds of food every year to pantries around the county.

People can fill the bag with nonperishable food and place it on their doorsteps Saturday morning. Volunteers will drive around and pick up the bags starting at 9 a.m., as well as knock on doors to ask people if they want to donate. The food gets ferried to one of 10 tractor-trailers parked around the county. There, more volunteers box up the food, put it on pallets and bring it to the food bank.

“People probably don’t realize it takes thousands of volunteers,” said James Fitzgerald, director of operations at the food bank.

Walk & Knock expects to collect 250,000 pounds of food, which sounds like a small slice of the 6 million pounds collected every year. However, this is when the food bank gets a lot of those shelf-stable products that make up the basis of food boxes, Fitzgerald said. It’s food families can use all year long.

The number of donations collected during Walk & Knock peaked in 2010, when 166 tons, or 332,000 pounds, of food was collected. Since then, donations have gone down.

Despite a recovering economy, local food pantries continue serving thousands of households. FISH of Vancouver, for one, recently moved to a larger building because of increased demand for food.

Walk & Knock is about several hundred volunteers short this year, said Justin Wood, the nonprofit’s president. Those who are interested in participating can email him at president@walkandknock.org. Or, volunteers can just show up at 8:30 a.m. Saturday at one of these sites, where they’ll get an assignment:

• Clark County Fire District 6 Station 61, 8800 N.E. Hazel Dell Ave.

• Hudson’s Bay High School, 1601 E. McLoughlin Blvd.

• Martin Luther King Elementary School, 4801 Idaho St.

• Orchards Elementary School, 11071 N.E. 69th St.

• Chuck’s Produce Salmon Creek, 2302 N.E. 117th St.

If a bag of donations doesn’t get picked up, it can be brought to one of the drop-off sites listed on the grocery bag. One way or another, the goal is to get food to the food bank and into the homes of people who need it most.