Lafarge teams fill local pantries for the holiday season
Courtesy Photo Lafarge Alpena divided up into groups to compete in a Fill the Pantries challenge for the holiday season. Above, Lafarge team members bring donations of nonperishable food to St. Vincent de Paul Pantry.
Courtesy Photo Lafarge team members unload a truck full of food at St. Vincent de Paul Pantry.
Courtesy Photo Lafarge Alpena divided up into groups to compete in a Fill the Pantries challenge for the holiday season. Above, Lafarge team members bring donations of nonperishable food to St. Vincent de Paul Pantry.
Courtesy Photo Lafarge team members unload a truck full of food at St. Vincent de Paul Pantry.
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ALPENA -- Lafarge Alpena employees have been doing their part to make sure the community has enough to eat this holiday season.
"The initiative is called Fill the Pantries," said Jeff Scott, plant manager of Lafarge Alpena.
He said when the company has events where they serve food, they take what is left to local pantries. On a recent tour of a local pantry, Lafarge employees were able to see that more food is needed, so they wanted to help out.
"They didn't really have much in stock," Scott said. "So, we brought that back and talked about it internally, and said, 'You know what? We should do something about that.' So, I challenged the plant. We split the plant into 10 teams and we told the teams if they brought their weight in food, I would give them a day off."
Scott said teams were assigned by area of the plant, and they have really delivered in this intiative.
"We were trying to get this done before Thanksgiving," he said. "The guys and gals have been diligently bringing in food."
Scott said there are 200 people at the site, so that amounts to over 40,000 pounds of food.
"We reached out to several of the local pantries and tried to get a list of all the things that they needed," Scott said. "We're trying to fulfill those needs."
As of Wednesday, Scott said they were about 60% of the way to their goal.
"We're doing really well," he added. "Almost all of the teams are participating in the plant."
He added that they may extend a bit past Thanksgiving to meet their goal, but they want to make sure no one goes hungry this holiday season.
The Fill the Pantries initiative collects nonperishable food items for the Alpena County Baby Pantry, St. Vincent de Paul, Sunrise Community Food Pantry, Trinity Episcopal Church, and St. Bernard's Friendship Room.
Lafarge has done fundraisers like this in the past, but this is the largest one they've done.
As of Friday, here are the totals collected:
St. Bernard's donations were collected by the Process, Lab, Environmental, Automation, and Storeroom groups. This 20-person team's goal was to collect 3,700 pounds of food and they exceeded that goal by 214 pounds, for a total of 3,914 pounds.
St. Vincent's donations were collected by the Management and Capital Projects groups. This 24-person team's goal was to collect 4,400 pounds of food. As of Friday, they have exceeded that goal by 542 pounds, but more donations will be dropped off on Monday. The Yard team is still working on collecting donations for St. Vincent as well.
Alpena County Baby Pantry donations were collected by the Reliability and Kilns groups. This 32-person team collected $3,520 for the Baby Pantry to make purchases for the families that they serve.
Trinity Episcopal Church donations were collected by the Quarry and Mobile groups. This 20-person team collected 3,200 pounds of food.
Sunrise Community Food Pantry donations were collected by the Electrical & Instrumentation team. They will be making their delivery next week.
Scott noted that both the pandemic and inflation have likely affected the pantries.
"Maybe some people aren't donating because they just don't have the wherewithal to add a little extra," Scott said. "Maybe they're just not getting that flow of food. So, we thought this would be a great opportunity for us to rally around."
Scott said Lafarge employees have been extremely generous, and he is happy to see so many of them involved in helping the community together.
"Everybody likes time off, right?" he added.