Officials announced their “Downtown Thanksgiving Food Challenge” on Wednesday.
The annual food drive is a competition between employees at the city, state and county levels to donate non-perishable food items to help families who are food insecure. This year, the Koffman Southern Tier Incubator and the Binghamton University College of Community & Public Affairs are joining the competition.
The drive is through the Community Hunger Outreach Warehouse, which is commonly referred to as CHOW.
From Nov. 13 to 17, CHOW collection bins will be at the following locations:
- Team State
- Binghamton State Office Building at 44 Hawley St. in Binghamton
- Team County
- Broome County Office Building at 60 Hawley St. in Binghamton
- Broome County Sheriff’s Office at 155 Lt. Vanwinkle Dr. in Binghamton
- Team City
- Binghamton City Hall at 38 Hawley St. in Binghamton
- Team University
- Koffman Southern Tier Incubator ar 120 Hawley St. in Binghamton
- University Downtown Center at 67 Washington St. in Binghamton
The bins will be available to receive donations from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. At the end of the week, items from each building will be tallied to see which team collected the most food. The winner will be announced on Nov. 21.
For every dollar donated, CHOW is able to distribute five meals to families in need. In Broome County alone, one in eight people and one in six children are food insecure. Each year, CHOW, through its network of nearly 100 partner agencies distributes more than 2.2 million pounds of food.
Last year, more than 15,000 meals were donated. Team State collected the largest donation.
Monetary donations can be made at this link.