Whitehall-Coplay Hunger Initiative has been feeding Whitehall Township and Coplay Borough residents every two weeks since March and will continue until at least Aug. 27. At every distribution, we are adding new guests.

Our numbers have been consistent. For the July 16 distribution, we served 146 households, 187 adults, 86 seniors and 176 children. Whitehall had 81 households, 110 adults, 54 seniors and 120 children. Coplay had 65 households, 77 adults, 32 seniors and 56 children.

For our community outreach program, we are in need of the following food items for this week: large and individual boxes of cereal, peanut butter or cheese snack cracker packs, wide noodles, baked beans, peanut butter and 18-ounce jars of jelly.

Just to give you an idea of our operation, members of St. John’s Evangelical Lutheran Church, 835 N. Third St., Fullerton, have allowed WCHI to use its Fritze Social Hall for our pantry since March. We provide household and children’s food bags. The huge pantry is set up as a production line.

Many volunteers sort all the food you and Second Harvest Food Bank provide to us. This ranges from 1,500 to 7,000 pounds of food on a given week. The large poundage is 22 pounds of fresh U.S. Department of Agriculture produce boxes provided free from Second Harvest. We get approximately 200 of these. We do not always get them.

Volunteers unpack the nonproduce boxes, sort them and then put together 200 household bags and 200 children’s bags. Every household gets a large bag of food. If it is a large household, the guests are given additional bags. Children get their own food bags. We also provide a roll of toilet paper, dog and cat food, coffee and tea and baby food.

Lana Snyder, WCHI vice president and church council president at St. John’s, gives me a list of needed items to add to what we have to make up the 200 quantity. That is why my list, as mentioned above, changes weekly.

On Tuesdays during the distribution week, WCHI purchases 200 loaves of bread and 200 rolls of toilet paper from Walmart in Whitehall, which is put on our truck. On Wednesdays, my husband, Tom, goes to Second Harvest with our 14-foot box truck, and the workers load our ordered food with forklifts onto our truck, which includes the produce boxes, if available.

He brings the truck to St. John’s, and many volunteers help unload the food. Then many volunteers load the truck with the packed bags from the week before for Thursday’s distribution at Redeemed Christian Church of God, Third and Coplay streets, Coplay. St. John’s has the food all bagged and ready in the pantry for the Whitehall distribution. The process starts all over again the following week.

Both locations serve any Whitehall and Coplay resident. Identification is required, and a Whitehall or Coplay resident can go to only one location and at only one time. Nonresidents are given a resource list and are turned away.

The next distribution will be 11 a.m.-noon and 6-7 p.m. July 30 at both locations.

Your food and monetary donations are very much appreciated and needed. We cannot do the magnitude of this operation without all the gracious public support. Thank you all.

Questions? Call or text me at 610-730-8067 or email me at whitehallcoplayhunger@gmail.com. Check out our new website, whitehallcoplayhungerinitiative.org, and please follow us on Facebook.