Hosting A Door-to-Door Food Drive (and why now's a good time)

A couple summers ago, a local realtor team hosted a door-to-door food drive to benefit Northwest Arkansas mini pantries.

They sent out this postcard first.

Then, they distributed bags to each household with this flyer stapled to the outside and a list of needed items inside.

Here’s what they collected.

Door-to-door food drive items collected by Lisa Darling and her Keller Williams team

Now is a great time for a neighborhood door-to-door food drive!

  1. Folks working from home are organizing and downsizing.

  2. If you place bags outside a front door and collect from there as well, you’ll maintain social distance.

  3. Feeding America estimates 17.1 million additional people could find themselves without enough food as COVID-19 continues.

Just be sure to wash your hands!

Thanks to Lisa Darling and her Keller Williams team.

Mini Pantries and Covid-19

On March 23, P Rudder asked, “How are you changing things, if any, during this?”

We told her we’d consulted a professor of epidemiology who said because SARS-CoV-2 can live on surfaces for days, mini pantry use carries some risk. That to mitigate risk we’d removed the Pilot’s door.

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A week later, a doctor of epidemiology on the Pilot host church’s grounds crew advised we replace the door. “UV kills the virus. Birds and weather pose a greater threat,” he said. Deferring to our host, we put it back.

With expert guidance at all levels changing by the day if not the hour, all of us are adapting on the fly, doing the best we can.

If you are at increased risk for severe illness, your best is staying away from your neighborhood mini pantry. If you are under shelter-in-place orders, you might rationalize our work as essential. Or you might not. You might disinfect your neighborhood mini pantry before you use it. Or once, twice…three times a day. You might post reminders about hand-washing on the door (or walls if you removed the door). Your best might be shutting it all down until the threat passes.

We don’t know what your best is. We do know you if you are listening to scientists and following orders while taking care of yourself and others, you are doing it.