Neighbor to Neighbor

Become a part of the Food Chain!

The Kahn family has created a unique food drive concept whereby 52 familes from different Western New York neighborhoods will host a weekend food drive. The host family will distribute letters on Wednesday notifying the neighbors of the drive the following week.

Maria Kahn's Vision: A few years ago, following the October Storm, my family and I held a neighborhood food drive. We were fortunate enough not to lose our electricity or our food during the storm and wanted to help those families who did. We decided to pass out a flyer to our neighbors asking them to leave non-perishable food items out on a specific day at a specific time and we would pick them up. Our children, Sam and Nate joined in and delivered these flyers on our street and the two adjacent streets as well. On the day of the drive, Drew drove our car up and down the streets and we began collecting bags and bags of food. To our surprise and delight, almost every home participated, some even leaving multiple bags of food. The Food Bank of WNY supplied us with the needed food list to hand out with our flyer and agreed to pick up the collected food at our home. This worked out beautifully. To our surprise and the food bank driver's as well, we collected over 700 lbs. of food from just three short streets in our neighborhood....and it all took less than 3 hours. This got me thinking...

If one neighborhood, once a week collected 700 lbs of food as easily as we did...well that’s 36,400 lbs of food per year...

THAT'S OVER 18 TONS IN ONE YEAR!

On Saturday October 15th, 2011, the family launched the first official NEIGHBOR TO NEIGHBOR food drive in our own neighborhood. We have proudly partnered with The Food Bank of WNY who have ensured that this food will be picked up and distributed to those in need. Many friends have already signed on to hold the next drive and the drive after that to help me reach my goal of 20 tons in one year...Neighbor to Neighbor.

Interested in hosting a food drive? Contact Maria Kahn through the Neighbor to Neighbor website!