‘Food for Families’ asking for help

LAPLACE – “Grandparents now raising three children since father has left single mom with the kids.”

“Senior woman living on Social Security, can’t afford all her prescriptions. Please help her this Christmas.”

These may sound like extreme cases of need for those who live in the River Region, most of us in wonderful conditions with a steady paycheck.

But each year as we conduct our “Food for Families” program here in the River Parishes, we get requests such as this for help during the Christmas season.

That is why we are hoping many individuals, as well as businesses, will join us this Christmas season as we try to give something back to those in need.

Our “Food for Families” program is a simple one. We ask you to help donate non-perishable food items, or send in monetary donations that we will use to purchase food, and we will in turn use 100 percent of those donations to give food to needy families.

The employees at L’Observateur do all the work for the program, including boxing and delivering the food personally to those in need.

We get our names by asking the public to send in nominations of those they know who are in need, and as usual, we end up with usually more names than we can handle.

“This year I hope we have enough donations to help every family that is nominated,” Publisher Kevin Chiri said. “I personally love doing this at Christmas each year. It’s just a small way we can do something for those less fortunate. So I hope we get a lot of help this year for our program.”

From now until Tuesday, December 18, the L’Observateur staff will be looking for donations of rice, pasta, dry cereal, canned good, and any other non-perishable food items. We will also accept monetary donations, which will be used to purchase foods.

Then on Saturday, December 22, employees, family, and friends of the newspaper will personally deliver food boxes created from all the donations. We are looking to surpass the success of last year, when L’Observateur delivered 135 boxes to area families.

“The fun really begins when we get to finally deliver the food,” said Chiri. “It’s truly uplifting to see the expressions on the faces of these folks when they find out they have not been forgotten.”

Individuals or businesses that would like to participate may mail monetary donations to “Food for Families,” c/o L’Observateur, P.O. Box 1010, LaPlace, La., 70069. Food donations can be dropped off at our newspaper office, located at 116 Newspaper Dr., just off Hwy. 44 (old Main Street).

Anyone who would like to nominate a family or individual for a food box can fill out the form at the end of this story and send it to the address listed above.