The scouts of Troop 30 and Pack 30 delivered 5041 pounds of food Saturday, filling the shelves of the Watertown Food Pantry with everything from apple juice boxes to ziti pasta.
This is the second food drive for the scouts in 2021. The first, in May 2021, saw scouts collect 5186 pounds of groceries, cleaning supplies and personal items from Watertown neighbors. That makes the total 10,227 pounds for the year.
Our two Thanksgiving traditions are about community: The first is a turkey meal cooked in the woods, the second is our Scouting for Food Drive benefitting the Watertown Food Pantry. The combined efforts of the Troop and Pack consistently create the largest one-day food drive in Watertown every year.
“I can tell you, the scouts really hold up the food pantry,” said Kathleen Cunningham, Watertown Food Pantry director as the last of the over-filled food bins were put away. “Not only are they bringing in food, they’re going to their neighbors and getting the residents involved.”
Scouts distributed flyers in their Watertown neighborhoods and on Saturday morning, filled their parents’ cars with boxes and bags of groceries. Xavier Owens, a Cub Scout in the Webelos Den, collected 691 pounds of food in his family car.
At the United Methodist Church, the home of both the scouts and the Watertown Food Pantry, scouts from Troop 30 and the Arrow of Light Cub Scout den unloaded cars with thousands of pounds of food and then sorted them on the lawn. Patrol leaders Ethan and Tage organized the sort so tuna was separated into one bin, baked beans into another, and all the different soups got their own bins. While their team sorted tomato sauce from canned tomatoes, other scouts ran unsorted bags from cars to the lawn and yet others brought sorted carts of food into the basement-level pantry.
Service, community engagement and leadership development are essential to the BSA scouting program as youth lead their own activities. While Scouting for Food is the biggest drive of the entire Watertown organization, smaller acts of service are preformed throughout the year, including park cleanups and coat drives, and individual projects created and managed by the scouts themselves.
For more information on how your boy, girl or non-binary child can become a scout, contact us at watertowntroop30@gmail.com.
BSA Troop 30 