2022 Scouting For Food

As the Thanksgiving Holiday neared, Pack 44's Scouting for Food initiative served as both a community service and a tremendous spectacle, covering the back lawn at St. Paul Evangelical Lutheran Church with hundreds of grocery bags bearing food for local families in need.

The effort, organized by Pack 44 Service Chair Veronica Swope, netted 11,465 pounds of food, including soups, pasta, tomato sauce, pancakes, asparagus, carrots, peas, corn, stuffing, tuna, ham, chicken and much more. That pack and troop total was the second highest in the past six years as dozens of volunteers first distributed bags and a week later returned to pick up donations from around Lititz.

All told, the effort stretched over two hours one week and five hours the next, in exchange for which scouts and their families enjoyed the tremendous satisfaction of working hard for a worthwhile cause.

"It's controlled chaos," said Cubmaster Curtis Arpey, smiling as several dozen kids and adults quickly formed themselves into a team, including pickers, sorters, haulers and drivers who unloaded the bags, arranged the groceries into boxes organized by category, and carried them to the pickups and vans used to transport them.

"Scouting has a lot to with learning skills for now and the future," said Arpey. "We have a lot of fun in outings but this is our biggest service project to give back to the community, and that's a big part of scouting. So it was great to see how many families showed up to help."

The scouts and their families enjoyed free pizza for everyone from Metro Pizza, marking a delicious respite from the work.

The food drive was also a great chance for parents and their kids to work together. "Working alongside my boys for that length of time, for such a good purpose, and without them complaining even once was special," says Pack 44 Communications Chair Steve Volk. "I was proud of them and more importantly they felt proud of themselves."