Canned Food Drive and Food Packing

Here are the plans and some sample ways to get churches involved:

Canned Food Drive: We are setting a goal for churches of the WNCC to bring canned food to the annual conference from their churches. This food will be sent to the Winston-Salem, Charlotte, and Asheville Food Banks for distribution. The food banks are in need for “protein-based foods”: Beans, tuna, canned meats, stews. The food banks are having their “faith-based” food drive in the month of April. Working with them, we are urging WNCC churches to collect foods in April (and May) to be brought to the Annual Conference during the June meeting. We will then deliver one-third of the foods to the Asheville Manna Food Bank on Friday/Saturday and then the following week take the other two-thirds to the Winston-Salem and Charlotte Food Banks. The food banks report a 31% increase in the need over the past year. It is my hope that this will be just the beginning!
· Ask churches to pick one adult, one youth and one child to take charge of the event.
· Have contests within the church Sunday School classes for collection of food.
· Place a basket at the altar for the food collection.
· Set reachable, yet challenging goals for each church to meet.
· Get the word out in voice/print/emails.
· Go to the “Bread for the World” web site (www.bread.org) or the Church World Service (www.churchworldservice.org) to get stories about the need – share in district and church newsletters.
· For church members, print copies of the Winter edition of the Missions’ Alive (http://wnccumc.org/mis/pdf/MissionsAliveWinter2009.pdf).
· Have a day of celebration where people will bring food and dedicate it prior to bringing it to AC.
· Have a “stone soup day” (a pot with a large, clean stone in it, and members of the congregation each “add” to the soup for people the share in a meal) – then have a donation towards the Food Banks.

Stop Hunger Now Food Packing Drive: We have reserved the Kern Center (youth area) for Thursday and Friday of Annual Conference. During this period of time we will have 8 2-hour packing sessions. Each session will need 40 (or more) volunteers. Prior to AC we will need to get churches/members to pledge “meals” at .25 cents each. We will need to have a good idea of how many meals we need by the first week of May and will need to have money in-hand for the meals by the end of May. I believe a goal of 150,000 meals is very reachable. We also need to get the word out that we need “volunteers” to sign up for packing. We will set up a “sign-up” through email for each of the 2-hour packing sessions (beginning first week in April). The youth packing session will be Thursday evening (tentative at this time). Volunteers may be delegates, spouses, guests – anyone, young and old can participate!
· Have district challenge a neighboring district for numbers of meals to be collected (this can also be done as church challenging church).
· Each district needs one/two people to be in charge. We have asked the District Mission Coordinators to help – but have not heard from all of them. Laura Diviney will still be making these contacts while I am out of the country over the next two weeks and she will inform the districts who have said “yes, we will help.” If the District Mission Coordinators are not willing to lead, we ask the District Superintendents to please appoint someone. This person needs to keep track of the number of pledges and collect the funds.
· Set reachable, yet challenging goals for each church to meet.
· Get the word out in voice/print/emails.
· Let pastors meet my personal challenge – Mike Collins will pay for 400 meals ($100) and challenge other pastors to meet this pledge.

The Mission Luncheon: Annually we have a missions’ luncheon at the Waynesville’s First United Methodist Church. It will take place this year on Friday, June 12th beginning at 12:00 PM. We urge you to be present and to let others know! The cost will be $11 per person. Checks are made out to “WNCC Treasurer” and may be sent to: Office of Mission/Outreach, P.O. Box 18005, Charlotte, NC 28218. More info on this will follow the first week of April.
· Please note the Time Change (this has been done so that we might coincide with the schedule of the AC)

The overall coordinator for the Food Collection and the Food Packing is Sherry Sink. Sherry can be reached at 336.882.1736 or sherika12754@aol.com.