Thanksgiving Greetings & Congratulations to all!
One thing common to all Scouts is that they make promises. Through the Scout Oath and Law, they promise to do their duty to God and Country, to others, and to themselves. Our Scouts in the South Texas Council have outdone themselves on their promise to help others, when one considers the magnitude of our Scouting For Food drive.
Cubs and Scouts traditionally put out Scouting for Food bags on the first Saturday in November and then pick up the filled bags on the second Saturday. This effort provides Scouts the opportunity “To Help Other People.” And… hungry people will be grateful for the help at Thanksgiving time. We are certain that, like some “older Scouts now pushing 40” who look back with pride on their community service efforts in the early years of this very same project, today’s Scouts will look back with pride at their accomplishment in the food drive of 2006.
This 2007 drive will be our 21th council-wide food drive. We have always produced from 90 thousand pounds to an all time high of 124,263 thousand pounds of food across our 17 county area of South Texas. We have picked up food bags in all the kinds of weather South Texas can offer, including rain. In fact, the year we had cold and rain was actually one of our best years in production, since people stayed at home. A beautiful day can hurt the drive as folks get "out and about" early.
For the first dozen years of the drive we were frustrated at not being able to break through a production in the 90,000 pound range to the 100,000-pound goal. In 2000 we had an all time record set with 124,263 pounds collected across the council and now we regularly hit in excess of 100,000 pounds.
"Second Harvest" auditors estimate the value of food produced in such a drive to be $1.68 per pound, according to Bea Hanson, Executive Director of the Corpus Christi food Bank. Using that figure times our average production would mean that the Scouts and their leaders provide over $168,000.00 worth of tangible help to the less fortunate each year. Over the 21-year history of our drive we have produced over $3,400,000.00 worth of tangible help to others. This drive’s food production is used in Thanksgiving food baskets and that should make for a more satisfying Thanksgiving for all participants. Well over 2,500 Scouts and leaders normally participate.
Scouting does not receive any funding generated from the food drive. In fact, that is not our intent. This event is to provide Scouts with the opportunity to demonstrate the promise they make… “To help other people.”
Thanks for making 2007 a great year producing over 105,000 pounds! You can be proud of your participation!
Scouting! Vale la Pena… Scouting… it’s worth the effort!
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