Souper Bowl of Caring (SBOC) lawn signs are popping up all over. Churches and other organizations in Springfield have organized to make the weekend of Feb. 1 about more than an exciting football game.

On Saturday, Feb. 1, SBOC’s “Big Game Day,” youth and adults will canvas all the streets in the township to pick up donations of non-perishable food items.

Drive-through collections will also be held in the parking lots of Princeton Presbyterian Church (Baltimore Pike), St. Matthew’s Lutheran Church (Bennett and Lynbrooke roads) and St. Francis of Assisi Roman Catholic Church (Saxer Ave.). All food will then be sorted and delivered directly to local food banks.

As part of the Delaware County SBOC, Springfield is being joined by door-to-door collections in Rutledge, Morton and Westbrook Park. More than 150 youth and adults peppered lawns with more than 750 lawn signs as reminders that the SBOC is coming and that no community is immune from hunger. A recent report by 儿童和青少年的公民 states that childhood poverty is up 30 percent in Delaware County.

More than 21,000 children in Delaware County live in poverty and are in danger of going hungry every day.

Half of these children live in “deep poverty” which means their families earn less than $10,000 per year. In the Springfield School District, the number of subsidized lunches has grown over 90 percent since 2008. The unemployed and the elderly on fixed incomes are also vulnerable.

Churches in Springfield have participated since 2005. The Delaware County SBOC continues to grow with Morton added for the first time this year.

Last year, the Delaware County SBOC collected more than 29,400 food items and more than $4,000 for local food banks. Approximately, 5,000 more items were collected in 2013 than in 2012. Souper Bowl of Caring was started by youth in Columbia, S.C., in 1990, and has spread across the country with more than 10,000 organizations now participating.

Since its beginning, the national effort has contributed more than $90 million in donations and food directly to local food banks and other hunger organizations.

For more information about the Delco SBOC drive or to volunteer, contact Don Cadge at 610-742-1081. To see how the collection is going, follow Delaware-County-Souper-Bowl-of-Caring on Facebook. For more information visit www.souperbowl.org.

Delaware County News Network – January 29, 2014 – 在线阅读文章