WILMINGTON — Over the last few years, the Wilmington Public Library has collected food throughout the holidays up until early January to give to the food pantries in the area. The drive is meant to be a way for patrons with overdue fines at the library to pay them off — by donating non-perishable food.
“We saw that other libraries were doing this and we knew that there is always a need in this community for all the food pantries, especially around the holidays,” said Library Director Nancy Ehas. “So we thought that this would be something we could do for the community.”
Ehas said the library had raised around 1,100 items of food this year, which were to the results over the four or five years they’ve been doing that. Once all the food is collected, it is dispersed to the food pantries in town. A staff member counts all of the food collected and divides it up equally for each pantry.
Donations came from both people who had fines and others who simply wanted to donate.
In May, the library holds a similar drive, but for that they raise pet food and cat litter in conjunction with the Wilmington Area Humane Society. While the pet food drive isn’t quite as fruitful as the human-food drive, Ehas thinks it’s wonderful that library patrons have this program a way to help themselves and the community.
“The end goal is that we want all of our patrons to be able to use the library and this helps them make their payments in a way that they can,” said Ehas. “This also goes out and helps the entire community.”
