AmeriCorps holding Martin Luther King Jr. day local post-holiday donation drive
Utah State University-based AmeriCorps is holding a donation drive on Monday Jan. 18 — Martin Luther King Jr. Day — to obtain not only food donations, but also hygiene products, baby care products and household items to contribute to local food pantries.
“Every year there are a few mandatory days of service that the corporation over us sends out… so every year it’s kind of been our thing to do a food drive,” said Shonna Ferree, who is the vista leader over the USU-based AmeriCorps branch.
However, this year those at AmeriCorps decided that it wasn’t just food they would try to obtain through donations, because “we’ve been getting a lot more members who are families and students and we kind of wanted to expand our food drives to include hygiene items, household stuff, baby care items,” Ferree said.
The donations will not only go to help fill pantries around the community, but also to the student pantry on USU’s campus, and students are invited to help with the drive through the Val R. Christensen Service Center, alongside community members and AmeriCorps volunteers.
“We are working on recruiting volunteers for the day,” said Nelda Ault, the Community Service Coordinator for the Service Center. “I think mostly the biggest goal is getting people serving on a three-day weekend where otherwise they would be sitting around or putting off homework. There is that or there can be people who think, ‘It’s Martin Luther King Jr. Day,’ and get out and serve.”
A major reason for the drive to be held at this time of year is due to a continuous need from community members and students for food, even though it is just barely the post-holiday season, Ault said. Donating food to local pantries shouldn’t just be a holiday habit, she said.
“Even if the shelves get food on them at the pantries, you still need to fill them every month, every week,” Ault said. “Not to say that all the food is gone from holiday drives, but people throughout the entire year, not just the holidays. It’s not only a good way to honor Martin Luther King, but a good habit to get into.”
Ault also noted that the food in the student pantry at USU is stocked for all students, at all times.
“The student food pantry is for any students,” Ault said. “Whether it’s that they have a chronic food deprivation, or if it’s just that day or that week they need, any student can come anytime and get food.”
Macey’s in Providence, the south Logan Walmart, Natural Grocers and Lee’s in Logan will all donate some space for the drive, where AmeriCorps VISTA, AmeriCorps and SeniorCorps program volunteers will set up to collect donations from those stores, according to the press release for the drive.
Ferree specifically works with the non-profit Public School Partnership program, an AmeriCrops VISTA organization that gets volunteers from wherever they are based across the country to better the lives of community members, and is based at USU. PSP focuses on helping community members gain education and the resources necessary to pull themselves out of poverty, Ferree said. PSP is sponsoring this donation drive.
For more information on PSP and what they do, visit: publicschoolpartnership.com.
— mandy.m.morgan@aggiemail.usu.edu