City of Yuma launches regional holiday food drive challenge

YUMA, Ariz. (KYMA) -The city of Yuma is launching a regional holiday food drive challenge to support the Yuma Community Food Bank.

The food drive runs from now until December 19th and includes participation from Yuma County, the City of San Luis, the City of Somerton, and the town of Welton. The Cocopah Tribe will also be collecting donations. Each jurisdiction will collect non-perishable food donations and deliver them to the Yuma Community Food Bank.

"The challenge is going to be which organization can collect the most food and we base it on pound, so it's the heaviest, and we're going to really determine that by the number of employees. So if we have 1,200 employees with the city of Yuma, we'll divide it by the pounds," said deputy city of Yuma administrator Jennifer Reichelt.

The Yuma Community Food Bank serves thousands of homes each month and sees increased need during the holiday season.

"One of the things that they ask for right now are canned foods- nonperishable things that are going to be like staple fresh that won't go bad for a long period of time," said Reichelt.

The city collected over 700 pounds of holiday food items for the food bank for last month's Frozen Turkey and Ham Drive, and they hope this challenge will help even more.

"This challenge was just for us to kind of get all together and do a meaningful impact for the community. And once our community gets together, we truly make a big difference," said city of Yuma public information officer Christian Magana.

If you'd like to help, you can drop off nonperishable food items at municipal facility donation boxes around Yuma County like Yuma City Hall or donate directly to the food bank.