Radio Station to Launch Food Drive

A local radio station’s drive to collect canned food to feed the hungry during the holiday season will stop in Burbank on Saturday.

“It’ll go out very quickly,” said Doris Bloch, executive director of the Los Angeles Regional Foodbank, who said most of the goods collected in holiday food drives is gone by January.

This is the second year that the annual “KIIS Hunger Goodbye” drive has come to Burbank. During the drive, which runs from Friday through Sunday, a KIIS-FM disc jockey, Domino, will go to several Vons stores throughout the Los Angeles area with a truck that the food bank is trying to fill.

Bloch said food drives are useful not just because they provide the largest percentage of contributions throughout the year, but also because “people learn that there is hunger.”

Most of those who give to a food drive tend to be in the middle- to lower-income levels--and some have flirted with poverty themselves.

“We hear from the agencies that participate in the food bank, particularly with churches, that the people who used to support the food bank now need the help,” Bloch said.

The food drive will be at the Vons on Pass Avenue in Burbank, the only stop in the San Fernando Valley, from 8 a.m. Saturday until 6 a.m. Sunday. It will also visit Vons stores in Diamond Bar, Alhambra, Baldwin Park, La Habra and Paramount.

The group does not want donations brought in either boxes or bags, said Lorie Burstein, a spokeswoman for the regional food bank.

“Canned goods are wonderful because the process of collecting food is not a gentle one,” Burstein said. Bags and boxes rip too easily.

The group is looking for any variety of canned beans, vegetables, fruit, meats and fish. Foods in plastic containers, such as peanut butter, are also welcome, Burstein said.

The food drive will benefit agencies in Burbank, including the New Way Foundation, the Salvation Army Corps and St. Jude Episcopal Church.

“This helps us out a lot,” said Mark Youvan, general manager of the Victory House, a New Way Foundation drug and alcohol rehabilitation center for 40 to 45 people. The foundation has been in Burbank since 1967.

This is the 20th anniversary for the food bank, which has distributed more than 200 million pounds of food since 1973.

The food drive with the radio station, which is in its fourth year, has brought in about 26 tons of food.