Soroptimists put holiday food boxes together
MOSES LAKE - When 150 Moses Lake families celebrate Thanksgiving this year, it will be with the help of Soroptimist International of Moses Lake.
The organization fills baskets for its annual Thanksgiving food basket project Saturday beginning at 9 a.m. through noon.
Project chair Faye Maslen said 20 to 30 workers would probably be on hand at the assembly location, at 706 Penn St., Saturday morning.
"On Monday, you never know," she said. "We're hoping we have 20 or so at least on Monday as well. We get a few of the husbands as men volunteers because those boxes are pretty heavy to load, and then they have to go to schools and be unloaded."
During the work party Saturday, the group divides up its bulk items and loads the first two of three boxes.
On Monday the organization fills the third box with milk, frozen carrots, eggs, margarine and a frozen turkey, beginning at 8:30 a.m.
The boxes are then loaded and delivered to designated locations for pick-up by needy families.
Maslen estimates the organization has been going on for 20 to 25 years, but not on nearly as big a scope.
"The first year, we did four or five families - they might have gotten a couple of boxes each, it's hard to say," she said. "Now we do 150 families and every family gets three boxes of food."
The group's major fund-raising comes from bazaars and teas, Maslen said, and the project is one of the way the Soroptimists use their funding.
Food items donated this year for the first time include apples, frozen carrots from National Frozen Food Corp.; 150 pounds of margarine donated by Lep-Re-Kon Mart and dehydrated potatoes from the J.R. Simplot Company.
Some staple items like beans, rice and soup mix will give families a little extra food this year, Maslen added.
The project is one of the group members' most favorite projects, she said.
"It's just a project we all felt real good about and we really like to be able to keep doing it from year to year, because it really does help so many people," she said.
The number of members in the 150 families can range from 500 to 800 individual people, Maslen said.
"There's a lot of people in real need, and our program has a lot of people who do not use the food bank; they wouldn't ask," Maslen said. "Their names come to us through various methods and we determine we can help them, we do. Soroptimist is a group that particularly favors women and children, but a hungry family is a hungry family and if they need help we try to help them."
Project co-chair Debbie Doran-Martinez said recipients are derived from the Moses Lake School District and other resources. The group is not accepting solicitations for baskets, but any community contributions are appreciated, she said.
For more information, contact Maslen at 509-765-4839 or Doran-Martinez at 509-765-4732 or 509-750-4232.