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It took about two weeks for employees at the West Pharmaceutical Company, Jersey Shore to collect over 2,500 pounds of food to donate to the New Love Center, Avis.
"We all donated a little bit here and there. All the teammates across West," Ron Long, maintenance manager at the company, said.
"It's a big thing that we're passionate about -- all of us. We push family at our company. We want to make sure we're sharing that with local communities and people in need," he said.
The food West collected included everything from canned foods to household necessities like laundry detergent.
"A lot of things we think are important for day-to-day life -- important for nutritional meals," Long said.
Long shared that he personally had experienced some difficult times.
"When I was younger I was in a tough spot with my family. I was at a really low point and we didn't have enough money. I was hurting for food and things like that," Long said.
"When I was 22, I actually got to the point where I was going through a drive-thru with my kids, and we went through the drive-thru because it was dollar menu-type stuff. There was a gentleman who was homeless and he was walking by and we gave him our food, even though we were in a tough spot. Very important," he added.
Although it is a lot of food, according to Brett Newell, the New Love Center's operations manager, it is going to be used quickly.
"What was really helpful was the laundry detergent that they were able to organize and bring in. That's something that food stamps don't cover but that is an expense for everyone," Newell said.
Recently the Center served about 120 family units and when you account about 2.5 people per family that comes close to 300 people, Newel shared
"And, the number's only going to go up," he added.
The New Love Center serves people in Lock Haven, Jersey Shore and a portion of Lycoming County.
Newell shared that one in five people in Lycoming County are food insecure. In Clinton County, where the center is located, that number is one in four people.
"I believe that's the second highest rate of food insecurity in the state," Newell noted.
"In general since COVID, the need has increased. Sometimes there's been ebbs and flows where people had more food availability to food stamps, but recently with the cost of gas, the cost of food, cost of fresh produce, especially the cost of nutritious food, has skyrocketed. The trend is that it's going to continue to grow. We've been seeing our numbers increase and we're only expecting to see our numbers continuing to increase," he said.
This article was written from a video that can be found on the Sun-Gazette YouTube channel.