SHELBY — Forever Boy Scout Troop 406 and Cub Scout Pack 421 are asking the Shelby community for help.
The two groups are teaming to lead a “scouting for food” program. Folks interested in donating can drop off food items at the First Lutheran Church Office, 33 Broadway St. in Shelby, through Nov. 5.
Food donations being sought include anything that can sit on a shelf — items like canned goods, noodles, boxed meals, cake mixes and more.
If any Shelby residents want to donate but cannot get to the church office, they may call the office at 419-347-7675 and a pickup time will be arranged for the afternoon/evening of Nov. 5.
Boy Scouts and Cub Scouts will deliver the collected food items to First Lutheran’s food pantry later that evening. According to Brian Crum, First Lutheran’s treasurer and office manager, the food pantry feeds 50 to 55 local families every week.
First Lutheran’s food pantry is open every Wednesday from 9 to 11:30 a.m. The church also offers a mobile food pantry on the third Tuesday of each month, June through September, at 10 a.m. in the First Lutheran parking lot.
Crum is also the den leader of Cub Scout Pack 421 and the charter organization representative for Forever Boy Scout Troop 406. He said the “scouting for food” program dates back multiple decades.
“I was a Cub Scout in like 1990 and we were doing it then,” Crum said. “I’m sure they probably did it even 15 years before that.”
In past years, Boy Scouts and Cub Scouts would distribute flyers to every house in the city and return to pickup food items the following weekend. But a limited amount of scouts has made that strategy a bit more challenging.
“We didn’t want to just let it (scouting for food) go,” Crum said. “There’s a lot of good that comes from that.
“In its heyday, I think we probably collected 10,000 to 12,000 cans of food a year. There’s no way we can do that (this year), but we’d still like to try and do something.”