STARKVILLE — While Christmas may have come and gone, fridges and freezers in the Golden Triangle are still filled with holiday leftovers.
But Starkville Strong’s Second Servings program is holding a drive to put those leftovers to good use. From 9-11 a.m. Saturday, volunteers will collect those leftovers at Worker Bees, 504 Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Drive, repacking the food into meals for those in need.
Starkville Strong Executive Director Brandi Herrington said the Second Servings program is a continuation of the nonprofit’s mission, as it takes prepared food that would otherwise be thrown away and repurposes it into meals for those struggling with food insecurity.
“It fits into our mission because it is being creative and thinking outside the box to meet the needs – to use what’s already in the community to meet the needs and address things that are not always easy to address,” Herrington said. “Taking people’s leftovers, whether it’s from a restaurant or a large sorority house … and keeping it from going into the trash to put into the mouths of people who are hungry, I just don’t see how you can go wrong with the amount of money we’re saving by salvaging good food.”
Shannon Voges-Haupt, program organizer and owner of Worker Bees, said Second Servings started in April. The program typically collects food donations from five restaurants and a Mississippi State University sorority house throughout the year, which volunteers then repack into meals on Tuesday, Thursdays and Saturdays every week.
But this Saturday, the program has opened an invitation for anyone in the community to also bring out their holiday leftovers, preventing waste after the holiday and feeding even more people who are hungry. Voges-Haupt said Second Servings has invited the community to participate like this once before, after Thanksgiving.
“One family had a whole turkey leftover that they just never ended up (eating), and so instead of having to eat leftover turkey for another week and a half or freezing it, they brought it to us,” Voges-Haupt said.
Any food that is donated, Voges-Haupt said, will be redistributed and packed into single-use containers. Meals will then be distributed at Second Servings’ typical drop-off points.
About half the food, she said, goes to Casserole Kitchen, a local soup kitchen that serves fresh meals three times a week.
“The people who come to Casserole Kitchen get to take a couple of meals home, as like a to-go meal to get them through the next couple of days,” Voges-Haupt said.
Voges-Haupt said meals are also frozen and taken to other Second Servings distribution partners, like the J.L. King Center’s after-school program, the Boys and Girls Club or Five Horizons Health Services. The distribution partners commit to having a freezer in their locations, where the food is accessible for anyone that needs it.
At the end of each month, the rest of the food that is still frozen is taken to Starkville Strong’s Neighbors Helping Neighbors event, Voges-Haupt said.
“So far, we’ve made about 22,000 meals, and according to our calculations, that’s about 55,000 pounds of food we’ve prevented from being thrown in the trash,” Voges-Haupt said.
Besides bringing Christmas leftovers to Saturday’s drive, Voges-Haupt said volunteers can also sign up throughout the year to help with packing food any Tuesday, Thursday or Saturday, or make donations to fund the program’s purchases of single-use containers at tinyurl.com/4fbrvcdb
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Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 48 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.
