Help Us Get Ready for the Biggest Food Drive of the Year
- judysfarah
- Sep 17
- 2 min read
The biggest food drive of the year for our community is coming up to help our neighbors in need.
Marcus Arnold, Jose Zambrano, and their team of community members are organizing the 6th Annual Community Food Drive hosted at Divine Savior Church in Orangevale to benefit the Orangevale-Fair Oaks Food Bank. Donation bins are set up around town where you can drop off donations now. The biggest donation day is on Saturday, October 4 at Divine Savior Church, where a drive-thru will be set up to conveniently drop off your grocery items from 8:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m.
“The goal is to collaborate and meet new people. It's an event to just collaborate all walks of life,” says organizer Marcus Arnold of Divine Savior.
The annual drive keeps growing in success each year. Started during the pandemic by Divine Savior to help their church family, it’s now expanded to provide for the entire community. The drive aims to collect more than 30,000 pounds of food items that will help stock the food bank pantry.
It’s also become a community event with other local churches helping, including Fair Oaks Church, Redeemer Covenant, and Christ the King, among others. Twelve local schools are collecting, including Carnegie Middle School, Trajan, Ottoman, and Dewey elementary schools, and community clubs like the Orangevale and Fair Oaks rotary clubs.
Then there are volunteers like Annabelle, a student at Earl Legette Elementary School. Annabelle has set up a collection site outside her home and has boxes ready for donations. Additionally, her uncle, who works in food services, has pledged to make a substantial donation to the food bank.
“Stories like Annabelle's truly motivate us and energize our community efforts. Thank you,
Annabelle, for your dedication!” Arnold said.
More than 100 volunteers help bring the whole operation together, working in shifts, to make the drive-thru go smoothly. They will collect the dropped-off items, sort them into categories, and load them onto pallets. The food will then be loaded into the box trucks to be taken to the food bank that day. Volunteers will also be there to unpack the donations.
The day of the collection will be a party-like atmosphere to celebrate the community, with balloons and a DJ. The Knights of Columbus and other donors will provide donuts, snacks, and drinks. The Sacramento Metro Fire District, CHP, and Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office will be on hand with their cars and trucks. Scouting America troops will be unloading cars with other school children welcoming donors. A few car clubs will be on hand to drop off donations and show their rides, including a low rider car club, along with the Sacramento Mustang Club.
“The end result is the food, and the community coming together. But the scouts and the kids are really the front faces that everybody loves to see. And they'll get in a fire truck, they'll get in the police car, they'll do their sirens, and they hang out,” Arnold said.
“I like to call it the Super Bowl of food drives, and nobody else does it,” Arnold says. “It's really a beautiful feeling in terms of people.”