The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is providing 200 deliveries of food to food pantries and other charities in the state of New York. Deliveries began in the upstate New York and New York City areas last week.
This initiative is taking place to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the First Vision in Palmyra, New York. Latter-day Saints are partnering with nonprofit food pantries and local charities — such as Catholic Charities, Barakah Muslim Charity and the Salvation Army— to provide more than 800 tons of nonperishable food.
Elder D. Todd Christofferson of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles announced this initiative on Feb. 27, before the onset of the COVID-19 outbreak in the United States. Benjamin Lee, an operations manager for Eastern Service Workers, told Newsroom that the demand on the group’s emergency food services has “increased tenfold since the beginning of the pandemic.”
The Eastern Service Workers and Barakah Muslim Charity representatives received 5,000 pounds of food each and say it was the largest single food donation they have ever received.
The food shipments were sent to New York from the Church’s Bishops’ Central Storehouse in Salt Lake City, Utah, and included food grown, picked and harvested from Church-owned farms in Utah and the Intermountain West and processed in canneries in Utah.
“The Lord blessed us this year with a bounteous crop, and we’re able to [use this surplus to] distribute these products where they’re most needed,” said Richard Long, welfare manager for the Church’s North America Northeast Area, to Newsroom.
Read more about the food donations on Church Newsroom.
