What a start to 2020! The play on words is a little tired by mid-January, but we’ll go with it anyway. A corporation with a vision for thriving communities has embraced Loudoun Hunger Relief’s vision for a community in which everyone has access to adequate, nutritious food. We see only good things to come.
Microsoft, about to be our new neighbor, a stone’s throw from the pantry at Compass Creek, has provided a $10,000 gift to Loudoun Hunger Relief (LHR). The gift will be used to provide chicken for families in need throughout the first several weeks of 2020 and to purchase some much needed new warehouse equipment.
At LHR, much of the food we stock is donated to us by our amazing grocery partners, farm and farmer’s market partners, and private and corporate food drive donors. But high value, perishable items like milk, eggs and chicken are not as available through the donation process. This gift from Microsoft will allow us to purchase chicken, a universal protein, for at least a month. The mid-winter, post-holiday months are our leanest time for food donations, and it will be wonderful to be able to offer the hard working families who must come to us for food a chicken option during this time. We will serve approximately 300 families a week all through the winter months, and chicken will be a fabulous addition to a healthful diet for those families.
Warehouse equipment is not glamorous. We’re especially grateful to Microsoft for seeing the need for functioning equipment in our logistics operations. At LHR, we move about 1.6 million pounds of food per year through our 4500 square foot facility. It takes teamwork and good equipment to do that efficiently. Our warehouse staff and volunteers are looking forward to having new food hampers that will make sorting incoming food-drive items, storing bulky boxes, and moving stock around the warehouse much easier. As a bonus, the new hampers are much more easily cleaned than the obsolete ones, saving time and effort on the cleaning process.
We are thankful to Microsoft for partnering with us to help those in need in Loudoun. Our new neighbor provided a gift that will help so many in our community have enough to eat. There is no vision more basic than that.
