Kudos for neighbors helping neighbors

Valley neighbors shared more than food with each other Saturday during the fourth annual Valley Thanksgiving Blessing.

Nearly 2,000 local families were treated to food boxes purchased and packed with love by their Valley neighbors at six sites around the Mat-Su Borough.

Perhaps the best thing about this neighbor-to-neighbor effort is its scope. Valley Blessing isn’t the singular effort of six local churches. Rather, it’s a community effort that folds in businesses like The Home Depot and Valley Rent a Center, organizations like the Boy Scouts and Wasilla High School girls’ basketball team and church congregations from Trapper Creek to Sutton.

That this is a community effort is part of the blessing.

“It’s a total Valley-wide initiative,” said Jake Davies, who led the effort at Wasilla Bible Church. “Our prayer is that those who are receiving, by seeing the community working together, see that we love them, that we care about them and that they are not going to go hungry.”

Davies said about 150 volunteers just at the Wasilla site made the labor of love possible.

The number of neighbors served this year was down slightly from last year’s peak of 2,023 families. This year, 1,963 families were served at the six sites around the borough, Davies said. When the blessing began in the Valley in 2010, it was offered only in Wasilla and Talkeetna. That year, the community was blessed to share food with 1,166 neighbors, he said.

In 2011, Trapper Creek was added to the distribution sites and 1,402 Valley residents received food.

Davies said that this year’s slight decrease in numbers is likely due to weather over the weekend and changes in the food distribution sites.

Here’s how it works. Valley Thanksgiving Blessing organizers pool donations and buy the food they think will be needed from the Food Bank of Alaska. A Mat-Su Health Foundation grant covered some of the cost for the turkeys shared, but private donations footed the rest of the bill.

Just the Wasilla site purchased 4,200 pounds of food, Davies said. Getting that food from the Anchorage food bank warehouse to Wasilla Friday involved a lot of prayer and some white-knuckle driving, he said.

This is not a state program. It’s not funded with federal dollars or through some large corporate grant.

This is an annual gift Valley residents give their neighbors. It’s about making sure our words match our actions. We believe we are here to help each other every day.

Everyone achieves more when we work together toward common goals. This is true whether you are a basketball team in pursuit of a title repeat, or a community aiming for civic excellence. Valley Thanksgiving Blessing highlights what’s truly best about living here — we help each other.