Food banks around the country are facing shortages that often happen when diminishing donations meet consistent or growing need.

Summers are typically hard for nonprofits, but this summer the cost of food and the impacts of the dry conditions have further limited food donations, and our county food banks are struggling along with the rest of the country.

To fill the empty shelves that Fishline was also seeing, a call went out to our community in early August, asking for help in perishable and non-perishable donations. A remarkable, almost-immediate response came as a result!

Within an hour of the social media announcement, donations began to come to Fishline. Our neighbors arrived with trunks full and bags overflowing, bringing canned goods, toilet paper, loaves of bread, milk and cheese.

Gardeners harvested especially for Fishline, and we received hundreds of pounds of our local best — the kind of healthy food our clients appreciate so much. Families welcomed the opportunity to teach the lesson of neighbors helping neighbors to their children, and some of the sweetest moments for our volunteers were when they were handed these precious gifts by a child.

Those donations, big and small, added up in a hurry. Thanks to the kind and generous heart of our community, during a week when normally we’d receive several hundred pounds of individual food donations, we received more than 11,000 pounds!

We can’t thank this community enough for its unwavering and poignant expression of neighbors helping neighbors.

Mary Nader
Executive director
North Kitsap Fishline