Point Park students, staff collecting canned goods during Scouting for Food

Point Park University is collecting food for Scouting for Food Month. Boxes will be set up around the campus for donations until April 26.

Scouting for Food has been collecting food for over 22 years.

"Our founder went to the Boy Scouts and asked them to do a community hunger project," said Iris Valanti, director of communications for The Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank, one of the five main food banks involved that helps distribute food.

Scouting for Food has now become a yearly project that the Boy Scouts do in their communities. The goal of the Scouting for Food is for the Boy Scouts, Cub Scouts and venturers to help feed the hungry in their communities, which is done through food donations.

The campaign can either be organized at the district level or by each individual troop. The collected food can be taken to a food bank or to a local food pantry, church or homeless shelter that the troop is working with. Canned food is the best type to donate, such as soups, canned meats like tuna, fruit, vegetables and evaporated milk.

There are five food banks that distribute the food - The Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank, the Corner Cupboard of Greene County, Greater Washington County Food Bank, Westmoreland County Food Bank and The Salvation Army. The food donated to the campaign is distributed for free.

Point Park's involvement with Scouting for Food began when Dr. Katherine Henderson, former president of Point Park, took the chair of Scouting for Food for the surrounding colleges and universities. Since Dr. Paul Hennigan has become president, he also took her place as chair.

"He recognized this as a Student Affairs and Activities event," said Ashley Dalton, director of Student Activities. "I [now] represent him."

Dalton is not the only one who represents Hennigan and Point Park. J.W. Tabacchi, Student Activities coordinator, received training early this March at the Chatham Center of Chatham University. The training was so he could better understand the campaign and the work that goes on behind the scenes.

"This training helped me better grasp how to be an administrator for Scouting for Food," Tabacchi said. "There is a lot of behind the scenes work that goes into making a food drive successful, and the more prepared you are the better. I was not familiar with the online portion of Scouting for Food, and the training helped show me how Point Park can use this feature. We have used this feature in the past, but it was good for me to be trained on how to use it."

The Boy Scouts of America brought in different participants, representatives and volunteers to speak about the different aspects of Scouting for Food. One woman from a local food bank spoke on how this benefits the needy. Another speaker was a Boy Scout who spoke about his experiences from collecting donations from neighborhoods, along with several business representatives on how they collect in the work place and how to make collecting a priority.

The training helped give ideas of how to collect donations, by making boxes and bags available for collecting donations, as well as setting up an online donation on a Web site.

Once the food has been collected, it needs to be counted. Every item of food has a unit value placed on it. The more people the item can feed, like a box of cereal, the more it is worth. The unit values goes up to seven. This helps the participating institutions keep track of how much has been collected.

In the first year of collecting, Point Park collected 478 units of food and has increased every year. The goal is to increase 20 percent each year. This year's goal for Point Park is set at 2,246 units.