Stocked up
White County food pantry reopens
The Deck the Box holiday fooddrive contest worked. Donations allowed the Community Action Program for Central Arkansas food pantry in Searcy to reopen Jan. 3 after being closed for eight weeks.
Brittany Dyas, White County services coordinator, said 15 families were served that day. “I was really, really pleased,” she said. The pantry hadn’t been able to supply the demand for food and had to close before a food-donation contest called Deck the Box was held during Christmas in the three counties served by the Community Action Program for Central Arkansas.
“We couldn’t really serve the people like we really wanted to because we just did not have the collection of food we needed and didn’t have regular donors to the food pantry, so we were struggling for a little bit and had to close,” Dyas said. “That’s when Melissa did Deck the Box.”
Melissa Allen of Conway, community programs director for the Community Action Program for Central Arkansas, came up with the idea of having groups, schools and businesses decorate boxes to collect food in Faulkner, White and Cleburne counties.
“The entire project collected over 5,600 pounds. That was really good,” Allen said.
“I honestly didn’t know what to expect with the first year. I was really overwhelmed and excited.”
Photos of the boxes were posted on Facebook, and people voted for their favorites. Trophies were given to one winner in each county, and a grand champion was named for most votes.
First place trophies went to Bald Knob Head Start in White County, the Cleburne County Animal Clinic in Heber Springs and Woodrow Cummins Elementary School in Conway, which also garnered the most votes to take the top prize.
Haymond Insurance in Searcy narrowly beat out Woodrow Cummins Elementary School in Conway for the most food collected.
“It was by a slim margin that [Haymond] won. Haymond was 890 pounds; Woodrow Cummins was 855 pounds,” Allen said. “That’s a new partnership that we have over there in White County, and we’re really excited about it.”
Also contributing in White County were the Bald Knob and Beebe Head Start centers and the White River Area Agency on Aging.
Haley Emerick, marketing manager for Haymond Insurance, said that in November, the agency received a call about the CAPCA Food Drive.
“To help with the food drive, CAPCA tasked us with creating a collection box for the Haymond Insurance Team and our customers,” Emerick said via email. “Our benefits team member, Denise Dry, went to work creating the box. We shared the opportunity with our team at Haymond and on Facebook and let the donations come in. We decided to be involved because we know we have a need in our community, and the CAPCA food drive was a small way we could give back.
“Our donations were from our amazing 22-person team, with each bringing in a little food here and there to support the drive. We enjoyed working with CAPCA to support our community.”
Dyas said the food collected through the drive will fill the pantry’s need for the immediate future.
“Right now, I’m hoping to get through a couple of months with the food that was donated, and my plan is to work with the community to do food drives maybe quarterly to continue to try to keep our food pantry stocked and continue to be able to help the families in White County,” she said.
“I’m hoping to be able to reach out to a few more organizations, maybe local churches or maybe other nonprofit organizations, to see if they could help us with food drives,” Dyas said.
“[The Searcy community knows] it’s an ongoing need, and they now know it’s an ongoing service we’re trying very hard to provide to the community,” she said. “As long as we have the supplies, we’ll fill the demand — because there is always a demand from people needing food and needing help.”
The pantry, at 1132 Benton St. in Searcy, is open from 8-11:30 a.m. and 1:15-4:30 p.m. Thursdays.
“We definitely need regular donations,” Allen said. “We do have amazing support in our community; we’re just trying to shore it up.”
Allen said she plans to make Deck the Box an annual event.
“It’s just a fun way to help people and to give back … gets people’s creative juices flowing,” she said. Plus, “it was tremendously successful.”