“The board, the staff and the volunteers of the pantry are extremely grateful to the community — both residents and students — who contributed to all of the food drives this fall which help provide food to families in need,” said Bob Ratterman, director of the Oxford Community Choice Pantry. “Much of what was collected is being distributed to the families we serve as additional food through our Holiday Food Program. We provided holiday food to 335 households for Thanksgiving and anticipate even more by the time the Christmas distribution is finished.”
The largest food donation of the fall was the Nov. 3 Kiwanis Club drive that collected 6,068 pounds of food for pantry clients in a door-to-door drive in the Oxford community. A mid-September community drive, jointly sponsored by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and Bethel A.M.E. Church, collected 1,163 pounds.
The Miami campus was also active in the effort to help feed the hungry in Oxford.
The annual food drive, conducted as part of Greek Week in late September, collected 2,996 pounds of food from Greek organizations on campus.
In addition, Chi Psi fraternity held its annual “Stuff the Bus” as part of homecoming week and collected 1,065 pounds of food in the parking lot of the Oxford Kroger store. That same week, the Miami football team held a food drive and donated 1,181 pounds of food to the pantry.
“I have been at the pantry for three years, but since becoming director in July, I have become even more aware of the level of support we receive from the community and the generosity is astounding,” Ratterman said. “The food and money donations are amazing and the volunteer hours phenomenal. Oxford is a generous, caring community and people are serious about wanting to help those less fortunate. Feeding the hungry is as basic as it gets.”
Distribution of this month’s holiday food began last week and will continue on the pantry’s service days through Monday.
In addition to those food drives that contributed at least 1,000 pounds of food each, the pantry received food from numerous other donations of between 100 and 1,000 pounds, including 742 pounds of food donated by Marshall School, 607 pounds from Sigma Pi, 385 from Alpha Phi, 286 from the Miami University Synchronized Skating Club and 215 pounds from the Reily Presbyterian Church.
There have been a host of other donations from students and Oxford residents, who contribute throughout the year and keep the pantry stocked for its mission of feeding people in the Talawanda School District.
“Fall food donations have helped restock our shelves, which are always depleted at the end of summer, but monetary donations have also been a large boost to our service,” Ratterman said. “We always need to make purchases for items like milk and eggs and for Thanksgiving, we provided one bag of food for a holiday meal. Some of those items needed to be purchased because we did not get them in the quantities we needed from the food drives.”
The pantry was helped with the holiday program by generous grants from the Oxford Community Foundation and the Butler Rural Electric Cooperative Community Connection.
Oxford’s “Empty Bowls” soup lunch last month has raised in excess of $7,900 so far, with some remaining bowls still being sold. That money will be used for needed pantry purchases.
The 335 households served with Thanksgiving bags provided food for 1,057 individuals.
Miami students have now left Oxford for the semester, having provided food and monetary donations to help the pantry. In addition to those food drives, the Miami Entrepreneurship Club donated $220 cash to the pantry and Beta Theta Pi contributed $147 in addition to a food drive of 95 pounds.
Several churches have indicated plans to make end-of-the-year donations and the Oxford Lane Library is conducting its “Food For Fines” program through the end of December. The library will take $1 off the fines owed by patrons for every non-perishable food item brought to the library this month. Items should be taken to the circulation desk. Food items must be non-expired and non-perishable.
About the Author