LIHU‘E — It was short notice, but employees of Wilcox Memorial Hospital managed to collect 883.5 pounds of food and $80 towards the Kaua‘i Food Bank’s Spring Healthy Food and Fund Drive Thursday. “This is really hard,” said Lolita Atiga
LIHU‘E — It was short notice, but employees of Wilcox Memorial Hospital managed to collect 883.5 pounds of food and $80 towards the Kaua‘i Food Bank’s Spring Healthy Food and Fund Drive Thursday.
“This is really hard,” said Lolita Atiga of the hospital’s Maintenance/Environmental Services Department. “Normally, we only do one food drive a year, but this time, they only gave us short notice and it’s really hard to collect because everyone is having a hard time.”
Despite these challenges, the Maintenance/Environmental Services Department finished with a contribution of 335 pounds, the largest contribution in the drive.
“We normally give a lot more, and if we had more time maybe we could have done better,” Atiga said. “Things are hard everywhere.”
Atiga said she remembers when the department gave in the neighborhood of 800 pounds during the food drive held by the hospital in November.
“In the spirit of healthy competition, departments challenged each other with bags of food in hand, managers piling up their donations in the hospital’s conference room for weighing just as they have done for the past five years,” said Brooke Johnson in a Wilcox Memorial Hospital release.
Connor Mullikin, who will be 3 in May, had just come from a preschool visit, his mother, a third-floor nurse, in tow with his bag of non-perishable food.
“It’s good to start the kids early in learning how to share with others,” an employee with the Maintenance/Environmental Services Department said while weighing in their contributions as Mullikin waited patiently.
Another nurse burst into the room with several bags of groceries tucked between a 20-pound bag of rice.
“Thank heaven I made it,” the nurse said, with just under 10 minutes to spare before the 10 a.m. deadline. “All the way from Walmart. This is a workout.”
Kelvin Moniz, the Kaua‘i Food Bank operations manager, said every bit helps in the effort to keep people fed through the Healthy Food and Fund Drive.
Before the Wilcox Memorial Hospital contribution was added to the tally, Moniz said the drive was at 12,000 pounds of food towards its 40,000-pound goal, and cash contributions were at about 30 percent of the $40,000 goal.
The Kaua‘i Food Bank distributes about 70,000 pounds of food each month to respond to the approximately 6,000 requests for emergency food, states the hospital’s release.
Moniz said people have an opportunity to help with the drive by contributing non-perishable food items and cash at any of the Kaua‘i county fire stations around the island, or at the Kaua‘i Food Bank facility in Nawiliwili.
He added that contributions can also be in volunteering to be part of the Food Collection Day on April 17 at sites island-wide.
“It’s never too late to volunteer,” Moniz said. “The more volunteers we have, the better. We’re all in this together.”
Volunteers will be needed at various times from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. at Walmart, the Big Kmart, Ching Young Village in Hanalei, Kukui Grove Center, the Big Save stores in Waimea and Koloa, Ishihara Market, Safeway and the Princeville Shopping Center.
For more information on Wilcox Memorial Hospital, visit www.wilcoxhealth.org and for more information on the Kaua‘i Food Bank, its Web site at www.kauaifoodbank.org contains suggestions on how to help or get help.
• Dennis Fujimoto, staff writer and photographer, can be reached at 245-3681 (ext. 253) or dfujimoto@kauaipubco.com.
