Wanted: Enthusiastic Food Donors & Volunteers in the Centreville Area

More and more Northern Virginia schools are reaching out to Food For Neighbors to help combat teen hunger. This includes Liberty Middle School and Centreville High School, which will soon become a seventh food collection and sorting site for these and other nearby participating schools. Below are the volunteer opportunities. If you want to make a big impact locally and if you reside in the neighborhoods feeding into Liberty Middle School, Centreville High School, or Mountain View Alternative High School, which is already receiving Food For Neighbors support, you are a perfect volunteer candidate!

Red Bag Food Donors: To donate food, visit https://www.foodforneighbors.o.... Donating food via the Red Bag Program is very easy!

• Request a Bag: This week, please visit https://www.foodforneighbors.o... to register as a food donor. A volunteer will drop off a Red Bag with a tag listing requested shelf-stable foods and five Saturday morning collection dates throughout the school year.
• Fill Your Bag: Shop for the listed foods.
• Leave Your Bag Out: On the requested Saturday mornings five times per year, put your food donations in your Red Bag, and leave the Red Bag on your doorstep. A volunteer will collect your donations and leave you a new Red Bag for the next collection.

Leadership Positions: To learn more, please contact Karen Joseph, karen@foodforneighbors.org.
We already have our overall Centreville Area Manager position filled by a long-time, enthusiastic Food For Neighbors volunteer. Join the team! There are a variety of roles from which to choose.

Other Volunteers: To sign up, visit https://www.foodforneighbors.o...

• Drivers: On select Saturday mornings five times per year, drivers follow a given route to pick up Red Bag food donations left on community member doorsteps, weigh the donations, record them in a provided application, and deliver them to the Centreville food collection and sorting site. Drivers may volunteer for one or more of the five events.
• Sorters: On select Saturday mornings five times per year, sorters go to the Centreville site to unload donations from driver vehicles, sort them by type into storage bins, and/or deliver bins to participating schools. Sorters may volunteer for one or more of the five events.

Your food donations, leadership, and volunteer support help Food For Neighbors provide students access to a reliable food source. This helps students remain in school, as there's less pressure to work long hours to provide for themselves and/or their families. It also helps them stay focused when they're in school, as hunger is not interfering with higher thinking. Longer term, the benefit of being better students increases the likelihood that they'll be successful members of the community, which lifts up everyone.

As one school social worker shared, “...having access to food to provide to teenagers who are hungry during the school day has been impactful in many ways. The Food for Neighbors program has allowed us to provide grab and go snacks to high school students who are often hungry. In addition, having food available for kids to grab in between classes and after school, has helped some kids focus more, has helped some kids when they aren’t feeling well and need to put something in their stomach, and has helped some kids with their mood. The most significant impact this resource has had is that it has helped destigmatize food insecurity as we open this up to all students….I can’t say it enough—Thank you Food for Neighbors for bringing together the community, who so often wants to help but doesn’t know how, and organizing the support, in such a way that so many families in need are being reached.”

Food For Neighbors: Hunger Is Closer Than You Think