Heber, Utah, Community Helps Children in Need During Service Initiative

By Mary Richards, Church News

During the Christmas school break, advocates in the Heber Valley in Utah were worried that many low-income children would not have enough food without access to school meals.

Diann Glenn, a board member of the Wasatch Community Foundation, took the lead in a service project to provide bags of food for the children’s families.

The foundation leaders coordinated with those at two food banks, the Christian Center of Park City, MVF Church and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to put the initiative together.

Then, they posted it on JustServe — a website and app where community organizations can list service projects with volunteer needs. People who were looking for service opportunities during the holidays found the project on JustServe and signed up to help.

Approximately 450 volunteers responded to the call to collect donated food, assemble and bag the food, load the bags into trucks and distribute it to the roughly 500 families who had been registered to receive the food bags from December 2-3, 2022.

There were fears they wouldn’t have enough food to complete the two shifts, but they had faith and were able to fill 1,200 bags with 24 different food types in what Glenn considered a “Christmas miracle.”

Businesses found the opportunity to help on JustServe, like Jessica McCandless from Ford Homes.

 
 
“We were looking for something as a company we could do to give back to our local community. We wanted to make more of an impact for good in our local community. Hopefully we will be partnering with the WCF throughout the year,” McCandless said.

The project had the help of families like the Horner family in the Deer Creek Ward of the Midway Utah West Stake.

“We heard about this activity in Relief Society and signed up on JustServe. We were looking for an opportunity for our girls to be able to help out this Christmas and feel the spirit of giving. We are grateful to be here and see so many other people who have come to help,” said Doug Horner.

Tom Herway and Anita Herway serve as public communications coordinators in the Heber Valley. Tom Herway said the Christmas food drive was “an example of how people acting on the pure love of Christ can produce miraculous results by organizing and participating in activities which magnify His love by giving something back.”

The Wasatch Community Foundation — made up of representatives from local community service, civic and religious organizations — meets once a month to identify, plan and execute activities which will serve the local community.

JustServe specialists Ann and Michael Moulton sit on the foundation’s human services board, which addresses the needs of low-income families; food, housing, transportation and self-reliance. Projects addressing these needs are often posted on JustServe, thus linking service opportunities to the community.

Roonies Recognizes — the philanthropic arm of Roonies Ice Cream in Heber City — also regularly posts its volunteer needs on JustServe. Roonies Recognizes works with nonprofit organizations like the Wasatch Community Foundation to help bring nutritious, shelf stable, and easy-to-make foods to those in the community who are food compromised. Often, volunteers can help package rice and beans in an assembly line.

The Moultons said local food pantries continuously post on JustServe as well. Volunteers are able to then see what is needed and when. For example, on February 25, the city of Midway in the Heber Valley hosted an event for women called Time Out To Serve. Wasatch Community Foundation organized for the Christian Center of Park City food truck to be on site, and women brought food donations for the local pantry.

In these and other ways, nonprofit organizations, businesses and volunteers in Heber are connected to each other through service to those in need.

Said Tom Herway, “We know that when we serve Heavenly Father’s children, we are blessed to feel His love for them and His gratitude to us.”

Copyright 2023 Deseret News Publishing Company.