Wooster Advocacy Group, DSA food drive collects 1,400 pounds

The Wooster Advocacy Group and Wooster DSA recently organized a Love Your Community: Give & Take Food Drive at the Wayne County Public Library. The event gathered more than 1,400 pounds of food donations, as well as hygiene products, from volunteers who dropped off goods.

Community members also were welcome to pick up food at the event, with more than 50 people finding food and other items they needed. Elora Agsten of the Wooster Advocacy Group noted how much fun it was to see and meet community members and be able to bond.

Accessing enough food remains a problem, with inflation and other factors driving up grocery prices. According to Feeding America, a nonprofit organization, around 15,220 people in Wayne County experience food insecurity, which is a household-level economic and social condition of limited or uncertain access to adequate food, and about 60% of those people are not eligible for federal benefits programs like Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or Women, Infants and Children.

The food donations left over at the end of the event were packed up and will be distributed by Wooster Community Kitchen volunteers to the 13 food boxes located in neighborhoods throughout Wooster and the surrounding area. These food boxes, similar to Little Free Libraries but for food, are kept stocked by community members and volunteers and are free for anyone to take what they need.

“I saw equal joy in those who donated food and in those who came to pick it up," Erika Keller of DSA said. "While in a truly just society, such food drives would be unnecessary, we came together to make as much justice as we could.”

The Wooster Advocacy Group can be emailed at woosteradvocacy@gmail.com and meets at 11 a.m. every second and fourth Saturday at First Presbyterian Church, 621 College Ave., Wooster.

The Wooster DSA chapter meets locally and can be emailed at dsawoosteroh@gmail.com.