Drive-by food drive is rolling into Lake and Geauga

Women’s clothing boutique J9 Lane is hosting another Porch Pick-Up Food Drive in Lake and Geauga counties to benefit End 68 Hours of Hunger.

Non-perishable food donations placed in a bag and put outside homes will be picked up on Jan 30 from noon until 4 p.m. Monetary donations through PayPal or Venmo are also accepted.

Interested participants can contact the organizer via Facebook Messenger at Janine Elizabeth with the address and the location of the donated items or to set up monetary donation arrangements.

This marks the fourth Porch Pick-Up hosted by husband and wife, Randy and Janine Diemand, owners of the online J9 Lane.

“Giving back to the community is extremely important to us as a family,” Janine Diemand said. “We wanted to make this a quarterly event. When the pandemic hit, we weren’t sure of how to make that happen. While brainstorming one night, the idea of a drive-by food drive came to be.”

With the help of her sisters-in-law, Jessi Byrum and Lisa Byrum, they plan to divide up the houses on the pick-up route and spend Saturday driving around collecting donations.

“Our first food drive consisted of approximately 15 houses,” Janine Diemand said. “Thanks to some amazing customers and generous members of the community, our last food drive had over 50 stops on it. As a way of thanking everyone we raffle-off gift cards to our online boutique and provide anyone that donates with a special discount code.”

End 68 Hours of Hunger is a public non-profit effort to confront the approximately 68 hours of hunger that some school children experience between the free lunch they receive in school Friday and the free breakfast they receive in school Monday.

“End 68 Hours of Hunger is such an amazing organization,” Janine Diemand said. “The number of kids they are feeding in our community is incredible. My family and I feel so lucky to be able to help in any way we can. We plan on continuing to do these porch pickup food drives every few months this year.

“We are excited to see how big we can grow this event.”

SUBMITTED Gibson Diemand works alongside his family and has watched the food drive grow since it began.

SUBMITTED Porch Pick-Up organizers say non-perishable foods like canned vegetables and macaroni and cheese are helpful.