Elks Lodge food drive giving away 800 boxes Saturday morning

IDAHO FALLS, Idaho (KIFI) – More than 800 boxes of food will be distributed to 400 families in need at the Elks Lodge starting at 9 A.M. Saturday. 

Forty-five volunteers helped stuff those boxes with pasta, canned soup, oatmeal, rice, cereal, canned chicken and tuna Friday in preparation.

Among them were 37 students from Elevate Academy.

“One in six American children or one in six Americans face hunger every day," said their teacher Jess Jenkins. "A lot of these students that were here today truly are affected by hunger at different points. Sometimes not all of them, but there are quite a few of our student body that have experienced hunger themselves."

In two hours, the students packed 500 boxes.

"There's still so many families and so many people, especially our veterans, our senior citizens, that don't have the help that they need to just make it through the week, let alone a month or a winter," said Julie French, the food drive organizer. "So we try to use a lot of the staple items that they can actually use to build on – when it comes to making meals and making things stretch further."

The Elks Lodge is located at 640 East Elva Street in Idaho Falls.

Each family will receive two boxes of food, along with a 10-pound bag of potatoes.