Florida Catholic | Despite High Price Of Gas, Monthly Food Caravan Goes On

Despite high price of gas, monthly food caravan goes on

BOB REDDY | FLORIDA CATHOLIC VENICE BUREAU EDITOR

Published: 07.16.08

OSPREY | A caravan of vehicles makes a two-hour, 100-mile-one-way trip each month all in the name of love.

Volunteers from Our Lady of Mount Carmel Parish in Osprey deliver six carloads of food to Our Lady of Guadalupe Social Services of Catholic Charities in Immokalee each month, bringing food donated by parishioners and local businesses. It started as an act of kindness in 2005 by Joe and Josephine (Jo) Kilgallon after the couple visited Guadalupe Social Services and saw a great need.

The parish is so organized that paper grocery bags are handed out on the first Sunday of each month with a list of items in need. On the second Sunday, the full bags of nonperishable goods – such as canned fruits and vegetables, pasta, cornmeal, beans, diapers, baby foods and other items – are collected and then delivered the next day.

Jo Kilgallon continued the labor of love even after her husband died. She is in charge of the drivers, and during the summer the parish youth group takes charge.

Ninfa Drago, executive director of Guadalupe Social Services, said she hands out 550 food baskets every week. “Direct assistance is up dramatically. We had just been helping farmworkers, but now we are helping out-of-work construction workers,” she said, crediting people such as Kilgallon with keeping food in the mouths of hundreds of families.

“People line up out our door waiting for help,” she said. “It has been hard on everyone.”

Return to Florida Catholic Online Home Page

Despite high price of gas, monthly food caravan goes on

Other Articles