Grace College and Mission Point Community Church sponsored their 10th annual Supermarket Sweep Wednesday at Owen’s Market, Warsaw.
“We partner with Owen’s and a few other local company sponsors for us to be able to put it on,” said Kiira Churchill, mission director at Mission Point Community Church. The event was from 10 a.m. to 11 p.m.
“We don’t want people in our community to be hungry,” said Churchill. “All of the nonperishable food items go to supporting our local food pantries.”
The nonperishable food will be donated to the food banks of Combined Community Services, Our Father’s House, the Salvation Army, Fellowship Missions and Heartline Pregnancy Center, said Churchill. The baby items also will be donated to Heartline.
Last year, the Supermarket Sweep collected more than $23,000 worth of food and products, which included 11,015 diapers and 17,020 pounds of food, according to a news release.
Churchill said last year consisted of about what was the average amount of what they get every year. However, they were hoping for a little more this year.
Last year’s donations provided food for more than 900 families in Kosciusko County.
The food banks give Churchill an idea of how many people are provided for after all the donations are weighed, which is information she won’t know until all the food is weighed today.
“A lot of people from local churches and from Grace College, their whole purpose in coming is to fill a cart. They’re shopping and they’re leaving the entire cart for us to put away and all that goes to the food pantry,” she said. “We have people that save all year long and they know this event is coming, so they use all of that money to be able to buy groceries for people in this community.”
Shopping lists were provided for people so they knew what to buy.
“We have a lot of people from the community who see what we’re doing, and we have shopping lists that give a list of everything that all of the food pantries are looking for. They will just do their regular shopping and donate items as they shop,” Churchill said.
Last year, 50 people volunteered to help during the Supermarket Sweep, according to the release. Churchill said she thinks a few more people volunteered for Wednesday’s event, but she wouldn’t know for certain until she tallied up everyone at the end of the day.
Volunteers did various things, such as standing at the door and telling customers about the event, sorting donations and helping pack donations.
