Food Bank still in need of food as Christmas approaches

BATON ROUGE, LA (WAFB) - The Greater Baton Rouge Food Bank has received over 6,000 bags of food from a large holiday campaign but is still in dire need of donations.

Coca-Cola’s red bags donation event collected over 6,100 bags of food from shoppers.

Officials with the food bank say that’s a great total at the halfway mark, but they’re still looking for more.

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“We really appreciate the community stepping in our time of need,” said James McGowan, the Director of Development for the food bank.

“We’re returning the food out as fast as we can. But we still need to get where we need to not only for the holiday season, but for the first of the year.”

They say there’s also been an increase in private donations since they first reached out for help. WAFB is a sponsor of the donation, along with the Associated Grocers of Baton Rouge.

“We’re not out of the woods,” said Emile Breaux, President of the organization “We’ve got a little further to go here. We encourage the community to continue to shop at your local stores.”

Red Bags can be found near the checkout lines of participating stores. A list of the participating grocers can be found here: http://www.wafb.com/redbags/.

The red bags cost $10. The Food Bank is currently accepting monetary donations and donations of non-perishable food items.

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