Ralf Eannance

By the time I had become Oneida County Executive in 1997, I was already impressed by the strong community of faith and works that was Mt. Zion (later Redeemer) Church. When I heard they wanted to start a new program with other partners to feed our community’s persons in need, I was anxious to learn more.
With a warehouse that had been donated to them, and with their volunteers and other resources, they had the strongest capability in our area to attract surplus and other donated foods and consumer goods by the trailer truck load. The plan they had developed to make this project sustainable was, to me, genius. They would give away some, and, at the request of their food donors, sell other items at a very low price. The proceeds of those sales would support their minimal costs of operation.
We assigned one of our social services workers part time to their location to qualify people for, and to distribute, food stamps. Those who went to the Compassion Coalition, and later the Bargain Grocer, could use their food stamps and, we all figured, could expand the purchasing power of their stamps (later EBT) by over 30%! In addition, the program had many items for free and items for other distributors to hand out at a very low cost. They quickly became a great partner with us to help our area. As the years went on, we expanded our contributions for this program, and more people whom we were meant to serve got even more “bang for their buck”. Our community is very grateful to all who made this possible!