Letter of the Week: Donate food for Harvesters

Donations needed

I am a weekly volunteer at Harvesters — the Community Food Network, and I received an email telling me that my services there would not be needed during the week of Aug. 16 through Aug. 20 or the week thereafter.

This means that for at least seven weeks from mid-June through August, there hasn’t been enough donated food at this regional food bank to warrant asking volunteers to sort and repackage it for distribution.

By comparison, during the cooler months the Harvesters’ warehouse floor at 3801 Topping Ave. in Kansas City is almost always crammed with pallets and barrels of food needing to be processed.

As one staffer remarked to me concerning donors, “I guess they think people don’t get hungry during the summer.”

I see donation barrels in most area grocery stores, and Harvesters welcomes monetary donations. Kansas Citians are known for stepping up when there is a need, and right now that need is great. Harvesters supplies food to more than 620 nonprofit agencies in 26 counties, and it all depends on you.

Richard Lovett of Kansas City sorts and reboxes donated food at Harvesters. He retired as a manager for Kansas City’s website. He was public information director with the city and had been a reporter and editor for news companies in Kansas and Iowa. He is a Red Cross disaster volunteer and recently helped run a Louisiana shelter for people displaced by flooding.

This story was originally published August 28, 2016 at 3:00 PM with the headline "Letter of the Week: Donate food for Harvesters."