The food that was carefully plucked off
grocery store shelves and brought to parishes in blue St. Lucy Project bags found
a home at the ALIVE! food warehouse in Alexandria.
Catholic Charities St. Lucy
Project donated 131 boxes — 5,092 pounds of canned vegetables, fruits, baking goods
and other food — to the ecumenical charity Oct. 16. Members of the Alexandria Sherriff’s
Office and other volunteers transferred the boxes from one truck to another in
front of the Alexandria City Hall.
Among the many initiatives of ALIVE!, giving a week’s worth of groceries to 475
families happens each month, said volunteer Dennis Warnke. “Unfortunately, there are a
lot of hungry people who live in the City of Alexandria and we’re serving quite
a few of them, but there are a lot who aren’t being served,” said Warnke.
Vince Cannava, program director for the
St. Lucy Project, said the organization is trying to increase the amount of
food they provide to the city. “We have Christ House that has been
giving out meals for 40 years to the homeless (but) this day is the first time that
St. Lucy was able to provide a significant amount of food to Alexandria City,”
said Cannava. “There are approximately 15,500 people in Alexandria City who
don’t know where their next meal is coming from, and 3,400 of them are children.”
