With the demand for donated food doubling in the last year, for the first time district and building leaders at Fairfield Schools held their own food drive to try and help meet the growing community need.

And the extra help — especially during this Thanksgiving holiday week – is greatly appreciated, Frank Margello, board member of the Fairfield Food Pantry, said Tuesday.

“Our clientele has grown dramatically. Comparing the numbers (of requests for food) from October 2022 to October 2023 we’ve more than doubled our clients,” said Margello.

“Our numbers have gone sky high and the Fairfield Schools’ food drive is one of the largest food drives that we do every year,” he said, adding that some of Fairfield’s 11 schools individually provide thousands of pounds of donated food items from students and their families, teachers and other employees.

Regionally and nationwide, inflationary costs have helped drive up demands from food pantries as “food insecurity” is increasingly a problem faced by more needy families. Hunger experts estimate more than 80 billion pounds of perfectly usable food is thrown away each year in the United States while millions of Americans have inconsistent food supplies.

The exploding need locally prompted Fairfield Schools’ leadership team to conduct their own food drive for the first time to add to the donations they made during school drives in past years.

Fairfield Schools Superintendent Billy Smith, who oversees the 10,000-student district that serves communities in both the city of Fairfield and the adjacent Fairfield Twp., said he and other administrators were happy to help.

“When we were asked to share information about a shortage of food at the food pantry that serves our community, I immediately thought that this would be a great opportunity to give back to our own community members,” said Smith.

“We immediately started planning our own food drive competition at the administration building and asked our individual buildings to consider doing the same. I often talk about how Fairfield Schools have so many people that go above and beyond, and these food drives throughout the district are perfect examples of what I am talking about,” said Smith.

Gina Gentry-Fletcher, spokeswoman for Fairfield Schools, said the first-time donation competition among administrators worked well.

“Each department was challenged to bring in donations of soup, peanut butter and macaroni and cheese. Each item brought in was given a point value. The department with the most points was the winner,” said Gentry-Fletcher.

Margello said it’s all appreciated.

So far Fairfield High School and Fairfield West Elementary are two of the biggest donors among the schools, he said.

“The high school had so many donations I had to go back for a second trip to pick it all up,” said Margello.

For more information on donating to the Fairfield Food Pantry, go to its website fairfieldfoodpantry.org and donations may be dropped off at the pantry’s headquarters at 78 Donald Drive in Fairfield.