By Stephanie Bunker
Moapa Valley Progress
Residents of Moapa Valley showed their generosity on Saturday morning, November 17, as the Boy Scouts from local Troops went through town picking up food for their needy neighbors.
Scouting for Food is a national event sponsored by Boy Scouts of America but is designed to help local people in need.
Organizer Susan Rose has been coordinating Scouting for Food in Moapa Valley for the last eight years. Some of the food is given to local churches, Rose said. But most of it goes straight to Cappalappa Family Resource Center.
Cappalappa’s foodbank can get low at this time of year, Rose explained. This event helps replenish the stores.
“There are a lot of people that are out of work and the food doesn’t leave the valley so it helps our friends and neighbors,” Rose explained.
On average, more than 80 large boxes of canned food are gathered. Rose said that the numbers were down a bit this year. Only 60 boxes of food were collected, she said.
A few days before the Scouting for Food event, the local Boy Scouts and Cub Scouts went around to each house and hung flyers on the doors to inform locals to leave a bag of unexpired, non-perishable food items on the front door by 9:00 Saturday morning. Then on that Saturday the Boy Scouts went all around town gathering the bags of food from the doorsteps.
Each troop was assaigned a specific area of the community to cover. Logandale Boy Scout Easton Dalley was one of the Scouts running from house to house gathering food. He said he was there because it was his duty and it was fun.
Josh Leavitt and his dad were out gathering food in Logandale as well. He said that he had been a part of the Scouting for Food drive last year as well. He explained that his time the drive counts towards his required service hours for Boy Scout advancement.
After the scouts gathered all the food, they took it to the Overton Community Center where it is sorted and boxed. The Girl Scouts Troop 261 and the 4-H group, MV Rouge Livestock, helped sort the food at the center.
Rose said that she greatly appreciated their help in sorting.
“I would have been in big trouble without them!” Rose said.
Right after the food is sorted into boxes it is taken straight over to Cappalappa to be put in the foodbank for those needy friends and neighbors to have food for the holidays. Cappalappa always accepts donations of food and if someone wants to give more, they can take it to the Cappalappa Recourse Center during the Center’s normal business hours..
