Hoosier Hills receives 4,267 pounds of food at drive

“Working together for hunger relief.”

Those were the words spread across a truck, which was dubbed Wally, parked in front of the Bloomington Walmart  this weekend.

As part of the Feeding America charity, Walmart and Hoosier Hills Food Bank
partnered for a two-day food drive in which volunteers handed out lists of grocery items for customers to donate. Food donations were then stored in Wally and taken back to
Hoosier Hills.

The food drive raised 4,267 pounds worth of food.

Jake Bruner, office and development manager of Hoosier Hills, said the goal was to collect 2,000 pounds.

Hoosier Hills Executive Director Julio Alonso said there has been a higher demand for food donations and that they have not lasted as long as they used to.

“We’ve had to do more to supplement so that we’ve got more food on hand to distribute,” he said.

In the last six years, Hoosier Hills has bought food from retailers for a discounted price through Feeding America, a national network of food vendors and charities.

This is one of the ways Hoosier Hills has gathered food, Bruner said.

“Also, one of our concerns was that we weren’t going to have enough volunteers for this food drive,” Bruner said.

However, Alonso said the event was successful and that they were pleased with the outcome.

“I think we’ve got a pretty generous and active community here, and we rely heavily on volunteers because we’ve got a pretty small staff to do what we do,” Alonso said. 

Bruce Murray, who works at Habitat for Humanity of Monroe County as a volunteer recruiter for AmeriCorps, a federal program that offers charitable services, went with a friend on Friday to volunteer at the food drive. He said he heard about the event through the City of Bloomington Volunteer Network. 

“One of the requirements of that is to spend one afternoon per month helping one nonprofit,” Murray said.

Alonso said Hoosier Hills and Walmart will probably work together again next year.