DOOR COUNTY (NBC 26) — Neighbors across northeast Wisconsin are stepping up to make sure everyone has access to a meal.
On Friday, the Feed Our Neighbors food drive officially launched to support families facing food insecurity.
We spoke with an organizer and a store who is collecting donations for the food drive, watch below:
"The intention is to help our food pantries to continue to serve the community need of food scarcity," Sue Schwartz, the organizer of Feed our Neighbors, said.
Schwartz, the organizer of Feed our neighbors, says 15 stores are serving as drop-off locations for non-perishable and canned food donations.
"We're looking for spaghetti noodles and pasta, we're looking for canned meat, baby food, baby formula, different necessities that everybody needs on a daily basis," Schwartz said.
Stores across the county are serving as drop-off locations for donations, from the southern Door area all the way to Sister Bay.
"Whether they're a mom and pop or a big box store, I received the same response in that 'how can we help. What do you need'," Schwartz said.
One of the participating stores, Healthy Way Market in Sturgeon Bay, is already received a flood of donations.
"I just put the [collection] tote out, I posted something on Facebook on our social and the response was really overwhelming," Caitlin Oleson, the owner of Healthy Way Market, said.
Even before the collection officially began on Friday, Healthy Way Market owner Oleson says people were already dropping off donations.
"I think maybe on like Tuesday or Wednesday night I was told by our staff that we had a few different people just pop in and leave pretty substantial amounts of food," Oleson said.
Neighbors can contribute to the Feed our neighbors effort through the end of December, with all donations staying within the county. A food drive will be held on November 15 at the Tadych's Marketplace parking lot from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., with another drive scheduled in December at Walmart’s parking lot.
