PUHI — The food is ready to go, said Wes Perreira, warehouse supervisor for the Hawaii Foodbank, Kauai Branch, Wednesday afternoon. “For the second year in a row, the Hawaii Foodbank, Kauai Branch has been awarded a $30,000 grant from
PUHI — The food is ready to go, said Wes Perreira, warehouse supervisor for the Hawaii Foodbank, Kauai Branch, Wednesday afternoon.
“For the second year in a row, the Hawaii Foodbank, Kauai Branch has been awarded a $30,000 grant from the G.N. Wilcox Foundation,” Perreira said. “This is money which is paramount to our feeding program.”
Perreira and James Hughes were briefing the newest board members, Beth Tokioka of Syngenta Seeds and Dr. Addison Bulosan of The Specific Chiropractic Center, on the grant and how much food it was able to bring to the warehouse.
Last year, the Hawaii Foodbank, Kauai Branch distributed more than 1.2 million pounds of food, Perreira said. Based on how things are going, it appears the facility in the Puhi Industrial Park will equal, or surpass that number this year.
At the head of that distribution, James Hughes is key to the success of the distribution.
“I was just thinking about that,” Perreira said. “James touches almost everything that comes and goes through this warehouse. At more than a million pounds of food, that’s a lot of work, but James has been doing this for at least the past 10 years.”
Canned goods are also the most efficient form of distribution because it can go anywhere with anyone.
“To make that $30,000 stretch, the Hawaii Foodbank, Kauai Branch took delivery of 18 pallets of canned goods working through the Feeding America program,” Perreira said. “Based on an average of 2,500 pounds per pallet, that amounts to 45,000 pounds of food. This is a substantial grant, but without the help of Feeding America, there is no way we could have gotten the same amount of food.”
