Hometown Hero: Donors to WTOC food drive

SAVANNAH, Ga. (WTOC) - America’s Second Harvest of Coastal Georgia will help more than 135,000 people deal with food insecurity this year.

A lot of that help can be credited to the WTOC Hometown Heroes who donated to the WTOC Day of Giving Food Drive for Second Harvest last week.

It came can by can and case after case, an outpouring of generosity evident in the intake of food.

“It really is great to see the people in Savannah step up when there is a need.”

On the Thursday before Thanksgiving every year, WTOC asks our viewers to join us in helping America’s Second Harvest Food Bank by donating canned goods and non-perishables. And once again you responded - dropping off donations all day long - and making this year’s WTOC Food Drive one of the most successful yet.

“We got over 6,000 pounds of and you think to yourself, that’s remarkable in one day. We don’t do those type of food drives. So, it’s nice, and people came specifically for that. They’d come out and you’d say which part of the cart is ours? And they’d say all of it, we shopped for you. It just makes you feel really good to know there’s that type of caring person right here in our community,” Mary Jane Crouch said.

The numbers - and what they meant - were even more impressive when measured by people instead of pounds.

“It’s about 5,700 meals that we’ll be able to provide just for that one day. So, as people sit down for Thanksgiving this week and they’re sitting there enjoying their meal, they can know there are thousands of people out there that will have access to healthy food because of them,” Crouch said.

And what so many WTOC Hometown Heroes gave on our annual Day of Giving will help Second Harvest keep giving.

“We’ve done a lot of what we’re going to do for Thanksgiving, and we’ve got that food out. But winter’s coming, so a lot of the items were protein items, soups and beef stews and things, that’s going to help us as we go into the winder months to make sure that those seniors and those families have access to really good healthy food.”

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