SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH – September 3, 2015 (Gephardt Daily) – Residents of the Salt Lake Valley donated thousands of items of food Thursday morning to the Utah Food Bank’s Beating Hunger by a Mile campaign.
It is a graphic display of the need for food assistance in Utah’s 29 counties. Organizers took donations at the Salt Lake City Hall building and then lined up the approximately 12,000 food items along a sidewalk running all the way to the Utah State Capitol.
Ginnette Bott is the chief development officer for the Utah Food Bank and feels strongly about the need to make residents aware of the hunger problem in our state. September is Hunger Action Month and Bott said, “It is a great time for all of us to be appreciative of what we have and know we can do more to help.”
Myrna Anderson has been thinking a lot about the homeless she sees on the streets of Salt Lake City. She told Gephardt Daily, “I hope, I hope and that’s all I can do, that my donation helps.”
Bott says every donation helps to fill the Food Bank’s shelves but more importantly to educate and raise awareness in the community. “We can never end hunger but collaboratively we can fight it,” said Bott.
Donations to today’s event will be distributed throughout the state. However, big food drives bring in only about seven percent of the items the Utah Food Bank distributes throughout the year. The public is encouraged to make money donations if they can to help Bott and her staff meet the annual demand for food.
Bott believes that when a family reaches the point where they need food, “they’re in crisis.” The Utah Food Bank is there to help them, but they need to ask for assistance.
