BY STEVE KEMME
The Cincinnati Enquirer
FAIRFIELD -- A recent flood of volunteer help will enable a Fairfield charitable agency to distribute 34,000 pounds of cereal to needy children in Butler and Warren counties during August.
Earlier this month, Fairfield Harvest received 20 1,000-pound boxes of Major League Grand Slam Cereal from General Mills. This week, General Mills sent 14 thousand-pound boxes of Rice Chex. Shared Harvest Foodbank, a non-profit agency that distributes food to the needy from an office and warehouse on Dixie Highway in Fairfield, was desperate for volunteers to help repackage the cereal into 1 1/2-pound plastic bags.
Shared Harvest wants to give the cereal to food pantries, soup kitchens, emergency shelters and other social service agencies in Southwestern Ohio in August, a month when there are no special food programs for children, said Tina Osso, the agency's executive director.
The Summer Food Program for Kids, which is operated by many agencies in the area, stops at the end of July. School food programs for needy children won't resume until the schools go back in session for the fall semester.
"That's the gap we're trying to fill," Ms. Osso said.
But more than 150 people have volunteered for this job.
"The outpouring of help almost has been overwhelming," Ms. Osso said. "If we didn't get enough volunteers, there was a danger that the cereal would not get packaged soon enough to get it into families who need it."
Volunteers are to work most of this weekend and through next week. "It looks like we will have an adequate number of volunteers to have the cereal bagged and distributed by mid-August," Ms. Osso said.
Major League Grand Slam Cereal contains corn puffs shaped like baseballs and marshmallows shaped like baseball gloves and catcher's mitts.
General Mills donated the Grand Slam Cereal to Shared Harvest because, due to a flaw, it contained no marshmallows and couldn't be sold in grocery stores. The company donated the Rice Chex because it was an overproduction.
The volunteers scoop the cereal from the 1,000-pound boxes, put them into 1 1/2-pound bags, place an ingredients label on the bags, put the bag into banana boxes and label the boxes.
Although there appear to be enough volunteers to process the 34,000 pounds of cereal in time for August distribution, Shared Harvest can use more volunteers to repackage the cereal and other products that it receives throughout the year, Ms. Osso said.
"The longer the cereal stays in our warehouse, the longer some hungry kids aren't getting breakfast," she said.
The volunteers working on repackaging the cereal range from Boy Scouts and youth groups to service clubs and retired people.
"Some of them are individuals who just stopped by to see it they could lend a hand," Ms. Osso said. "It's been really tremendous."
To offer help
Those wishing to volunteer can call the Shared Harvest Foodbank agency at 874-0114 or (800) 352-3663.
