Perdue and charities team up for holiday food distribution

As Thanksgiving draws closer, Perdue Farms has teamed up with the Food Bank of Delaware and the Harry K Foundation to make sure local families did not go hungry for the holidays.

The three partners teamed up to provide 450 Thanksgiving meal boxes at the Food Bank’s Milford facility Nov. 16. The boxes included chicken roasters for cooking, dressing, canned vegetables, pumpkin pie crust and gravy. 

Tish Brey, executive board member of the Harry K Foundation, said the foundation and the food bank have a long-standing relationship helping schoolchildren to have holiday meals. She said Perdue stepped up and helped provide what amounts to a holiday feast.

Cathy Kanefsky, president and CEO of the Food Bank, said, “This is a beautiful example of three different partners coming together to make sure people have enough to eat.”

Brey said 150 meals went to the Community Resource Center in Rehoboth Beach, and 10 schools took part in picking up boxes. In addition to the 450 boxes given out on Thanksgiving, Kanefsky said the intention is for the three partners to provide an additional 350 meals at Christmas time.

Kanefsky said a side effect of the COVID-19 pandemic is that people have needed help in an uncertain environment. The food bank has tried to step up and meet that demand through mass distributions, and through partnerships with companies like Perdue, Amazon and DoorDash to get food to families that cannot get to the food bank’s facilities in Milford and Newark. 

Bill See, senior manager of community relations for Perdue, said, “We’ve been involved in hunger relief for a long time. We’re a food company. 

“We have the resources and the ability to help. The peninsula is our home, where our associates live and work, and the folks that we’re helping through this program are our neighbors.”