By Barry Porterfield
Residents from Pauls Valley and throughout Garvin County said yes in a big way to helping a local food bank struggling a month ago to make ends meet.
Now the service operated by the Delta Community Action, housed in Pauls Valley, is doing much better thanks to a generous response from the public.
With that help Delta’s food supplies have built back up and climbed out of the dangerously low category.
Anita Gosnell, Delta’s social service director, described the plea for help from the community as a definite success.
“It’s going very well and has helped tremendously,” Gosnell said. “We were really running low on everything. It’s a constant battle, but now we have a little breathing room.”
Gosnell said the Delta office, housed in a local county building at 225 W. McClure, has for the last few weeks been getting some donations of food but mostly money.
Those funds have been used to supplement the supplies of food at the local facility.
“They are just dropping by sometimes and giving their donations,” Gosnell said about residents.
“People are also mailing money from all over the county.”
That money is then spent at stores here as a way of supplementing supplies regularly purchased from a food bank in Oklahoma City.
“We try to spend that money in Pauls Valley and around the county. We feel that’s only right,” Gosnell said.
In mid-July she said the requests for assistance from area residents needing a little extra help from the food bank had tripled. As a result, food supplies for the service began to drop way down; so low the facility was in danger of turning some people away.
With the help of the public the supplies increased back to a solid level, while this month the requests for assistance in the form of food baskets seems to have “leveled off some,” at least for now.
“So far it’s not climbing like it did last month,” she said.
“Maybe it kind of hit a peak.”
She reminds the public any donations of food or money can continue to be dropped off at the Delta office located in Suite 5 on the McClure building’s ground floor or they can call (405) 238-3838 for more information.
