Summer is just around the corner. The schools are closing, the pools are open, and soon the sidewalks will be sizzling in summer heat. How we love summer!

 

It’s also time for our 10th Annual Summer in the City food drive. When we began this campaign a decade ago, we were told it couldn’t be done; all Washingtonians left town for the summer. Our response was that the people we serve 52 weeks a year don’t have a second home in Bethany Beach.

 

Truth is, summer presents the greatest challenge for the food insecure, working poor of the city. While it’s in vogue to conduct food drives at Thanksgiving, Christmas and Lent, no one had ever done a major food drive in the summer and no one, except us, still does.

 

We are proud that each year we’ve collected tens of thousands of cans of food each summer and monetary donations that have sustained our signature program of fresh produce, milk and eggs, meat and poultry. The need exists — it’s real.

 

We will once again visit a couple dozen churches in Northwest Washington and Suburban Maryland and “collect the goods” and, once we fill all the JSM pantries, we will be assisting other needy pantries throughout the city. Because hunger doesn’t take a vacation.

 

This year, in honor of the Centennial of John S. Mulholland, we have an ambitious, unprecedented goal of 100,000 cans.

 

You can be a part of this great campaign. Visit us today and donate jsmff.org

Every donation is greatly appreciated, promptly acknowledged, and spent wisely on our neighbors in need right here at home.