The Big Sandy Mountaineer -

The Big Sandy Food Bank closed out its calendar year with a generous gift from students at Big Sandy Schools and First Bank of Montana. The gift helped augment the food bank's stores in a time where inflation has made keeping the shelves stocked increasingly difficult. In addition, changes in donations for this year's food drive have expanded the products offered in the near future.

For several years, the Elementary School has done a food drive to assemble Thanksgiving and Christmas food boxes for local families. The effort was spearheaded by Samantha Weaver, who teaches kindergarten. She explained the changes in this year's drive: "I call Terry every year and check in with him about partnering with the school for the drive. They had all of their food needs for the Christmas dinner baskets covered. He had this suggestion that the food bank was in need of paper products and baby food items. So we did a paper product drive and baby food drive for the food bank this year. Each grade was responsible for bringing a specific paper product item or a baby food item." She went on to explain that the boxes were full this year and that the collection was quite successful.

Another change in the school's food drive this year was the inclusion of the High School in the effort. That effort was headed up by Jessie Jaramillo, the Art teacher. She explained the expansion to the high school for collecting: "I wanted to bring that over to the high school because our community does such an amazing job of supporting our kids with sports, academics, music, any extracurricular activities that they do, so I thought that this would be a good way to give back to the community." The high school saw 10 students and a few teachers participating in the drive, which brought in baby food and paper products as well. They also raised $109. "It's a great first year, and we can just build on that for next year's."

The change to a paper product and baby food drive came about as a result of the Angel Baskets program, which has taken care of families in need of Thanksgiving and Christmas food needs over the last few years. The program has grown to such a degree that the food bank hasn't needed to collect to fill that need. Terry Grant, who does most of the food bank work, explained: "The Angel Basket program is one of the things that has really benefited the community as well as our food bank. Because they do what they're doing, it leaves our monies to use during the rest of the year. It's just a plus all the way around." The program has also changed the need of the food bank in our community. "Normally, the elementary school would provide us 12 Christmas boxes and then we would hand those out. We didn't need those boxes this year." The idea of collecting paper products came up and Mrs. Weaver ran with it.

"The back of my pickup was loaded with toilet paper, paper towels, paper plates, and other products. And then over at the high school, they did the same thing." He explained that the paper products are a huge help because they are things everyone needs. This way, families will not have to purchase those products. Instead they will be able to use their money to get milk, meat, vegetables, and other perishable items that the food bank doesn't distribute.

The money raised by the High School will go into the Food Bank account at The Grocery Store and help with buying products that are needed for local families. Terry emphasized that aspect of the work they do: "All of our stuff is purchased

locally. The food bank buys nothing outside of Big Sandy."

In addition to the paper product/baby food drive taken on by the school, First Bank of Montana provided a boost to the stock of food on hand this holiday season. The bank collected food items from customers, then did donation matching. "They matched what came in and they went one step beyond. They took a list of what I needed for the food bank and they would periodically change the list they were posting to reflect the need. So people only brought in what the food bank uses. And then they matched it can for can." The efforts were a huge boost in a year where food prices have shot up, making it difficult to restock the food bank.

Throughout our conversation, Terry expressed gratitude for the generosity of the students and teachers, as well as First Bank of Montana and their patrons.