Monday, February 07, 2000
Food project gaining steam
N.Ky. Harvest seeks volunteers
BY SUSAN VELA
The Cincinnati Enquirer
COVINGTON — Northern Kentucky Harvest, a new charitable group with grand plans of helping the Tristate's needy, has not let a few challenges steer its efforts off course.
Group leaders remain committed to following through with plans they unveiled before Christmas.
That's when group founders — Sheila Chellgren, wife of Ashland Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Paul W. Chellgren, and Sue Butler, wife of Corporex Chairman Bill Butler — announced that the new group wanted the Christmas spirit of giving to last throughout the year.
The group had targeted January as the month to start picking up excess food from restaurants and grocery stores and delivering it to soup kitchens, pantries and other charities.
Those plans were pushed back to March. Lining up businesses with surplus food and the agencies to receive it, plus getting volunteers, has taken time, said Stan Lampe, Ashland spokesman and Northern Kentucky Harvest board member.
“Our start-up is a little slow, but it's important that we be careful,” he said. “There have been some hiccups. But, by and large, we have found people in the region extremely generous.”
The group has donated about 450 boxes of clothing, including about 4,500 pairs of pants, coats and sweat shirts from Mason-based uniform supplier Cintas Corp.
On Saturday, volunteers sorted about 100 boxes of donated clothing at a warehouse in Florence. Representatives from Covington-based Fairhaven Rescue Mission and Storehouse Ministries Inc. picked them up.
Northern Kentucky Harvest also has donated about 7,000 canned goods to charities such as Welcome House in Covington.
By next December, “we'll be serving a need and making a dramatic impact,” Mr. Lampe said. “This is the year 2000. If there's one thing we should all ban together to do, it is eliminate ... needless hunger in the metropolitan area of Cincinnati and Indiana and Northern Kentucky.”
Many agencies are pleased with the new group's performance.
“This is the greatest way to bring together people who have too much and people who don't have enough,” said Molly Navin, director of the Covington-based Parish Kitchen.
The Northern Kentucky Community Center's executive director, Rollins Davis, said the food will feed youngsters attending the Covington-based center's after-school programs.
“It's a good idea,” he said. The new group is “pooling resources. These are food items that would be normally thrown away.”
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