Pope & Land Real Estate
By: Pat Becker, Marketing
Pope & Land is proud of its commitment to serving those in need in our metro Atlanta communities. Kicking off the month of December, our community service team was given the opportunity to volunteer at the Marietta Salvation Army location as part of the 41st Annual Can-A-Thon, a canned food collection drive and partnership between Publix, 11Alive and The Salvation Army, to ease the burden of food insecurity for thousands of our Georgian neighbors in need.
The bitter cold and non-stop rain showers didn’t deter our team members from completing the task at hand. Together, along with other community volunteers, we were able to set-up collection bins, unload, and sort thousands of incoming individual donations as well as donations collected by numerous schools, offices, churches, and clubs as they drove their cars, buses, and even U-Haul vehicles, filled to the brim with donations, thru the drop-off site. One of our favorite groups from Kids-R-Kids rolled through like prior years and even brought a class of students with them this year that were able to assist in unloading their bus and dropping cans in the various sorting bins. Benjamin the Weather Bear from Primrose Schools also made a guest appearance and was interviewed by 11Alive’s Emmy award winning Meteorologist, Chesley McNeil.
Highlights from this year’s event included visits from Santa, a singing choir, and thousands of cans – 191,922 to be exact. Donations from each of the four collection sites were delivered to a massive warehouse and then distributed among food insecure families before the year’s end. In addition, items will be pulled from the warehouse throughout the year, as needed, to stock The Salvation Army’s 13 metro Atlanta-area food pantries. Kudos to Pope & Land’s Property Management Team at TownPark Commons that held a donation drive prior to the event and successfully collected 314 items!
In Georgia, 1,156,660 people are facing hunger of which 335,720 are children. One in six children in metro Atlanta lives in a home that’s food insecure daily. Because hunger never takes a holiday, Pope & Land would like to invite you to join us in making a commitment to drop-off donations to your local community food bank throughout the year to help decrease those numbers and make a difference in the lives of those in need. The items that are most needed are non-perishable food items, canned goods (vegetables, soups, meats, sauces, fruits), dry goods (pasta, beans, oatmeal, grits, crackers, cereal), baby formula, and baby food. For convenience, interested donors can also shop online all year round for food items on the Can-A-Thon Wishlist for Salvation Army Metro Atlanta site created on Amazon.
TEAM – Together Everyone Achieves More