Goose Creek District Scouting for Food Special Update November 12, 2006 (Revised Nov. 13, 2006)

The collections have been tallied, and the enormous totals reflect the tremendous efforts of the Scouts and their leaders this weekend.  Altogether, we collected 98,660 pounds of food.  How big is 98,660 pounds of food?  Well if you stacked that many pounds of canned vegetables, the stack would be 7-1/4 miles high!   The food we collected will be distributed to approximately 1,600 Loudoun families and individuals beginning this week.  The Boy Scouts and Cub Scouts are helping out our community in a big way.

Before I list the food totals by pack and troop, I'd like to recognize Troops 163, 711, 761, 961, 997, 1550, and 1158, and our Order of the Arrow Chapter for superbly staffing the four collection sites in Loudoun County.  I hope you volunteer for the same duty next year, as couldn't pull off this operation without your service.  LINK, Messiah's Market and the Holiday Coalition were all raving about the efforts of the Scouts at their collection sites.  

And a special tip of the hat goes out to Troops 163 and 711 in Purcellville, who accommodated a 50 percent increase in donations over last year.  No matter how much we plan and prepare, we never have enough supplies for the Purcellville collection site.  Once again, those two resourceful troops figured out how to get a difficult job done on the fly.  We thank TW Perry for once again supplying us with a truck and driver to support our Purcellville operation, and we also thank Loudoun Interfaith Relief for letting us borrow many hundreds of their milk crates.

Alan Steiner deserves our thanks for overseeing the operations at LINK.  Each year, Alan introduces process improvements at LINK, and then we put his good ideas and innovations to work at the other collection sites.  On top of the 20,700 pounds of food collected by Goose Creek District packs and troops, our Scouts at LINK received and processed an additional 3,900 pounds of food collected by units from the Powhatan District.

On behalf of all of those packs and troops who delivered food to the Holiday Coalition, I thank Frank Ludlow of Troop 997.  About ten days ago, we obtained a large hydraulic lift for Holiday Coalition site, and on Friday morning, the electricians installed a 220 volt circuit for the lift.  Frank stopped by around lunch time on Friday and figured out that the electricians mis-wired the lift, and he also gave the lift a needed dose of hydraulic fluid.  I don't think anyone else on site would have been able to diagnose the electrical problem.  Fortunately, we were able to call the electricians back and they fixed the problem in time for us to use the lift on Saturday morning.  We would have labored much harder without the lift this weekend.  

Lastly, I thank all the Scouting for Food coordinators for energizing their packs and troops for this service project.  Your commitment to this project is awesome!  Please consider helping out again next year.  Here are the food collection weights by pack and troop:

Here's a historical look at our collections:

	Food Collections (lbs.)
Recipient	2006	2005	2004	2003	2002	2001
Holiday Coalition	72,167	63,558	57,855	42,095	34,827	N/A
LINK, Inc.	20,680	23,400	16,803	13,975	12,006	N/A
Messiah's Market/Other	5,814	5,106	4,313		809
Total	98,661	92,064	78,971	56,070	47,642	29,000

If you set out any Scouting for Food signs, please retrieve them as soon as possible.  Don't forget to enter your service hours into the www.goodturnforamerica.org web site.  Scouting for Food coordinators should send me the following information: 1) the number of youth Scouts who participated in one or more Scouting for Food service activities in 2006; and 2) the number of adults who participated in one or more Scouting for Food service activities in 2006.  For those who have ordered the special Scouting for Food patches, I will follow-up with you directly.  As always, if you want to discuss any aspect of Scouting for Food, please give me a call at 703-737-3325 (day/evening), 703-405-6341 (cell), or send me e-mail at blshiflett@earthlink.net.  

Yours in Scouting,

Brian Shiflett
Scouting for Food Coordinator, Goose Creek District