Michaela Stone receives donations at Rising Tide Co-op in Damariscotta on Giving Tuesday. (Photo courtesy Healthy Lincoln County)
Our Giving Tuesday food drive at Rising Tide was a great success! A great big thank you to Rising Tide Co-op for inviting us to hold this event with them!
We parked Lulu, the Lunch Wagon, our Bringing Food Home van, in the parking lot of Rising Tide, right by the entrance to the store. We opened the back doors, set up our sign asking for donations (with some helpful hints of what to purchase), and got the scale ready to roll. We keep track of our food donations by weight. Every item that came in was weighed before finding its place in the boxes that covered the floor of the van, to be sorted by our volunteers at a later date.
We collected over 200 pounds of dry goods at this event. We also received lots of monetary donations which will be used to purchase even more dry goods.
Where is all this food going, you ask? We will use these donations in a few ways within our charitable food system in Lincoln County. First, we have our community share tables all around the county. If you aren’t familiar with our share tables, they are designated areas that are run by our collaborative partners, which allow individuals and families access to free food. Our partners share the task of stocking these areas. Our gleaned produce is cleaned and packaged up by our volunteers and picked up by other volunteers that distribute to the share tables weekly. In the warmer parts of the year, we have anywhere from 13-18 tables with lots of fresh produce from our local farms.
During this time of year, we are down to six tables or so. In the winter months, it is harder to keep things from freezing if the designated areas are not insulated. Currently we have share tables at the CLC YMCA in Damariscotta, the Watson Center on LincolnHealth’s Miles Campus, Morris Farm in Wiscasset, Caring For Kids at the Bristol Mills and New Harbor fire stations, Skidompha Library in Damariscotta, and Faith Baptist Church in Newcastle. Please help yourself or help a neighbor.
Secondly, we use this food for our emergency food boxes. We have a food hotline here at Healthy Lincoln County, which can be reached 350-0536. If you live in Lincoln County and you need assistance with food, you can call or text this number and we can connect you to food resources in your area. Sometimes this means an emergency food box. We get calls directly from folks in need, or from the local community navigator, case managers, child protective workers, etc. that are working with families that need help. We will then go to the food hub and make up a box of food and deliver it.
If you would like to donate food to our charitable food system, please connect with us through the food line or call our office at 563-1330.
