One business in Jefferson recently wrapped its effort to support Greene County youth.

Heartland Bank collected over $2,300 worth of food items that were then donated to the Greene County School District’s School Pantry Program. Greene County At-Risk Liaison Emily Gannon is the coordinator for the School Pantry Program and every Friday she distributes food items to about 80 students in kindergarten through 12th grade bags with food to get them through the weekend. She works with the school pantry, donations and deliveries from the Food Bank of Iowa. 

Jared Taggart with Heartland Bank coordinated the Jefferson branch’s December to Remember Food Drive that is done annually across all of Heartland’s locations and talks about why they specifically choose to help out the school’s backpack program.

“When we heard about this program that the school’s doing and the need that they had, we thought what a wonderful opportunity for us to give back to the community and help out with this. We just think it’s a really cool program that they do. We were more than happy with the donations that we received. We really want to thank the community, the businesses in the community that donated to it. We thought it was a really good showing. We want to do this every year and see if we can keep this thing going.”    

Gannon points out how grateful she is to receive this kind of donation and shares the struggle she’s faced recently.

“To be honest I was discussing with the school nurses going down to every other week to send home with families. Just because the things that I was getting, it was kind of an odd collection of things I was getting to send home, and I always want to supplement a family’s pantry. But it wasn’t necessarily a bag that I was proud to send home with kids. And so this is giving me the opportunity to keep sending like, the kids will be very excited to see the kid-friendly things that are in the bags that I’m going to be sending home.”      

Gannon adds parents and guardians to contact her at the high school or their child’s building nurse for more information about signing up for the program.