If You Go
• What: Share for Share, a food drive and community potluck.
• Why: To amass donations for Share’s summer lunch program.
■ When: 6 p.m. June 10.
■ Where: Vancouver Police Department west precinct building, 2800 N.E. Stapleton Road.
■ Bring: Nonperishable food donations plus a potluck dish to share.
• Guest speaker: Pat Jollota, local historian.
All Vancouver neighborhood associations are invited to share with nonprofit agency Share as it feeds hungry children this summer and fall.
A community potluck and food drive is set for 6 p.m. on June 10 at the Vancouver Police Department’s West Precinct Community Room. The event is sponsored by the Vancouver Neighborhood Alliance, an umbrella group for all 66 city neighborhood associations, which has issued a friendly challenge: which city neighborhood association can amass the most food donations for Share and its hunger-response efforts for children?
Neighborhood leaders are invited to get busy collecting donations and then bring them to the weigh-in on June 10. Cash donations are welcome too. Pounds will be translated into dollars, and the neighborhood with the greatest total gets a trophy and bragging rights — until next year’s (still-tentative) event.
“Maybe this will become an annual thing for us,” said VNA secretary Noland Hoshino. “It’s because of Share’s summer lunch program for kids. During the summertime there’s a downturn in donations and it’s just when kids get out of school.”
If You Go
• What: Share for Share, a food drive and community potluck.
• Why: To amass donations for Share's summer lunch program.
? When: 6 p.m. June 10.
? Where: Vancouver Police Department west precinct building, 2800 N.E. Stapleton Road.
? Bring: Nonperishable food donations plus a potluck dish to share.
• Guest speaker: Pat Jollota, local historian.
Share feeds children free lunches every summer via what’s now called its Summer Meals program — it used to be nickamed “SummerSlam” — which is held late June through August at a variety of local parks, schools, community centers and apartment complexes, and sponsored largely by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Look for an announcement in a few weeks with those details.
This year’s event is the first time the VNA has come together to boost a local charity, according Hoshino. While the invitation was originally intended for neighborhood leaders of recognized Vancouver neighborhood associations, he said, the event will be open to everyone — since the real point is amassing as much food as possible to feed hungry children.
“Too many people? That would be a good problem to have,” Hoshino said.
Share spokeswoman Jessica Lightheart said there’s no such thing as too much food for Share’s overall hunger-response efforts for kids. If the combined generosity of USDA and the Vancouver Neighborhood Alliance overwhelms the summer-lunch need, she said, it will be put to good use when school starts up again. That’s when Share starts sending bags full of weekend food home with hungry schoolchildren at many local schools.
“It all comes under the umbrella ‘Care for Share,’ and it’s all great,” Lightheart said.
According to its website, Share provided more than 27,000 free meals for children in summer 2014 and routinely sent home well over 2,000 bags for children at more than 90 local schools during the school year.
More matching
The food drive will get an additional big boost from CenturyLink, the telecommunications corporation, which holds a nationwide food-and-donations drive every June and then matches, up to $1 million, the value of food and cash donated at local sites across the country. (Calculating the exact match amounts is done via “a complicated formula,” CenturyLink marketing manager Martin Flynn said last year.)
Last summer, CenturyLink’s contribution to Share fundraising was $146,624.
The CenturyLink matching program runs from June 1 to June 12, so the timing of the VNA event “just so happens to be perfect,” Hoshino said. “When we approached Share … we didn’t know that CenturyLink always has this challenge every June. But we know now!”
Feed yourself, too
In the midst of this food drive for hungry children, don’t forget to feed yourself and your friends, too. The event is a potluck dinner. VNA will provide the miscellaneous stuff — the cups and dishes and utensils and such — and welcomes small additional donations to help with that expense.
Pat Jollota, local historian and former Vancouver city councilwoman, will be the special guest speaker for the evening. Folks from Share will be on hand too.
For more information, contact Hoshino at 360-607-4462.
