Food for Families – Saint Louis Martin Council 15256

The council has led monthly food drives for the Sterling Food Pantry of Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Arlington since March 2018. In 2025, 62,332 pounds of food were collected.

They do more than collect and deliver food donations. They partner with the Food Pantry and St. Theresa High School Youth Ministry to tailor requested food & toiletry categories to the pantry’s needs, and sort the donations by category and expiration date. This way, pantry volunteers & staff only need to move delivered donations to the appropriate shelves in the pantry, saving them several days’ worth of work.

Every month, the council takes 400 blue shopping bags provided by the food pantry, along with a list of needed toiletries, food items, and priority items. Fliers are generated with a donation list, instructions for cash donations, and branding for Knights of Columbus and the Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Arlington’s St. Lucy Project, and attached to the bags.

Knights stage the bins at church entrances, redistribute bags as needed, and clean up after the final Mass. Knights and other volunteers carry shopping bags from church entrances to a parish meeting room and sort the donations by food/toiletry category, then by expiration date so the Food Pantry can distribute items near expiration first. Donations are then taken to the Food Pantry, and council members help pantry volunteers weigh donations and stock the shelves.

Each month, the Sterling Food Pantry distributes 33,000 pounds of food, providing 1,000 people with a week’s amount of food. Over the last two years, the council delivered about 4,800 pounds of food each month, over 14% of the pantry’s donations.

In addition, their Food Drive was highlighted in the January/February 2026 edition of Columbia magazine.