FOOD BANK FUND-RAISER OVERLOOKED

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, April 2, 1993                   TAG: 9304020215
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: B2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: SANDRA BROWN KELLY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium
FOOD BANK FUND-RAISER OVERLOOKED
For the past five weeks, small black-and-white "Check Out Hunger" signs in some Virginia grocery stores have invited shoppers to help Second Harvest Food Banks by adding a donation to their grocery tabs.
The program was the first statewide effort to raise operating cash for the food distribution centers. It may have been too modest, officials said.
The campaign ends Saturday and so far has collected no more than $35,000 of the $200,000 goal, said Pam Irvine.
Irvine is director of the Southwest Virginia Second Harvest Food Bank, which last year spent $27,000 to transport food given to it. She hoped the local food bank's share from the statewide campaign would offset some of those transportation expenses.
"Next year, we'll have to make the signs more colorful," she said this week, undaunted by the lagging campaign for the Federation of Virginia Food Banks.
Since the Southwest food bank center was burned out in December 1989, it has been in two locations and had to reconstruct all of its records.
Irvine said things now, however, are looking up:
She just moved into her first office after five years of employment.
The food bank has gotten $52,000 in grants to buy its first refrigerated truck so it no longer will have to rent one to pick up donated cold foods.
There's a small prepared-foods program going on with Lewis-Gale Hospital that could lead to a whole new service for the food bank center.
Irvine hopes the center can salvage more hot food being discarded by commercial operations by providing transportation to distribution centers. The Lewis-Gale food is being taken to Samaritan Inn, which serves meals to people who cannot afford food.
The way the Southwest Virginia food bank operates is like a giant grocery for its nonprofit member agencies. It receives donations from manufacturers and other sources, such as the Kroger Co.'s salvage warehouse, and sells the donated foods for 14 cents a pound to its members.
The member organizations then distribute the foods to needy individuals.
In 1992, the center on Shenandoah Avenue Northwest distributed 2.4 million pounds of food.

by Bhavesh Jinadra by CNB