Bread of Life Food Drive Still Growing In 25th Year

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Joe Delaney clearly heard the message in 1992, considering the current state of the Bread of Life Food Drive.

Delaney’s University of Notre Dame Alumni Club of Staten Island and the Notre Dame Club of the Mid-Hudson Valley are among organizations taking part in the 25th annual Bread of Life Food Drive.

The drive began when Father Edward Malloy, C.S.C, then-president of Notre Dame, asked alumni clubs to give a gift back to their communities to mark the university’s 150th anniversary in 1992.

“We decided to do a food drive,’’ said Delaney, director of the Bread of Life Food Drive on Staten Island. “We thought we did a good job and we did our job. When the recipient organizations came to us, they said no one gives us food in the spring and our food supplies are depleted. They said this food would carry us over to the summer.

“Once we heard that, we thought we’d do it again. Every time we kept going, we had more schools and volunteers signed on.”

Six schools collected 5,000 food items in 1992. This year, an estimated 65,000 food items were collected from 131 schools on Staten Island and in Brooklyn.

Three hundred volunteers collected the donated food from the schools and boxed the products at Msgr. Farrell High School on March 19 for delivery to 25 nonprofit organizations on Staten Island and in Brooklyn.

The Bread of Life Food Drive on Staten Island has collected more than 1.1 million items in the 25 years.

The program has grown beyond Staten Island over the past three years with help from Lou’s Lads, football players of former Notre Dame Head coach Lou Holtz. There are 150 cities committed to conducting food drives this spring, compared with 34 in 2014.

The Notre Dame Club of the Mid-Hudson Valley became involved last year. In 2016, eight schools were involved in collecting 2,000 food items, and students from John Jay High School in Dutchess County and the Bruderhof, a Christian community in Ulster County, were among the 15 volunteers boxing the food for delivery to five food pantries at Catholic Charities in Poughkeepsie on March 19.

“It’s incredibly rewarding,’’ said Erin Rider, director of the food drive for the Notre Dame Club of the Mid-Hudson Valley.

“For me, the most rewarding is seeing all the schools involved. Kids are bringing it to their awareness, maybe for the first time, and they’re seeing there is a need in our area.

“We have a duty as Christians to help and feed our neighbors.”

Kelsey Brodie’s older brother Liam was a volunteer in 2015, and she decided to participate this year.

“It’s a nice feeling being here to do something for someone else,’’ said Kelsey, a junior at John Jay. “I will come back and do it again.’’