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Food for Clay County-Challenge Enterprises Answers the Call

Food for Clay County-Challenge Enterprises Answers the Call

Bringing Together the Community One Pallet at a Time

In today’s world, contributing to your local community can be one of the few things that can keep us grounded in a sense of unity.  Especially during this pandemic, Impact Clay wanted to go above and beyond by providing dry, refrigerated, and frozen foods to Clay County. These items all required more equipment than the organization had at their current location at the Clay County Fairground.  This is when the CEO of Challenge Enterprise, Nancy C. Keating, stepped up to answer the call for help. Challenger Enterprises was able to offer their recently purchased refrigeration units, freezer and refrigeration trailer, along with the volunteers and staff. It cannot go without recognizing the tremendous efforts given by Reynolds Park Port in Clay County, that assisted in contributing equipment and warehouse space and for the cause.  When the call for packing boxes went out, Ocean Movers of Jacksonville stepped up providing exactly what was needed. Quickly the community came together to take on this challenge for the common good.

Challenge Enterprises was able to move 50 pallets of food items to the new location at Reynolds Park.  Volunteers broke down each pallet to build boxes that were enough to feed a family of four for about two weeks. This whole project was given a time limit of 5 days. With the amazing assembly line process, 37 volunteers and 5 staff members were able to accomplish the goal in 30 hours spread out over 3 days.   This time allowed the team to process 41 pallets of boxed meal kits and 17 pallets of bulk items, equaling a total of 1,230 boxes to distribute amongst the organizations and families in need within the Clay County Community. As a result, Challenge Enterprises and Impact Clay’s project distributed pallets and food to the following pantries: Orange Park, Middleburg, Green Cove, Lake Area Ministries in Keystone, St. Luke’s Catholic Church, UMC of Middleburg, UMC of Orange Park, Good Samaritan, Black Creek Baptist, Basca, Quigley House, Heritage, Food Pantry of Green Cove Springs, Springs Church, and Celebration Church.

Accomplishing this goal, could not have been done without the many hours contributed by each volunteer and staff member.  Challenger Enterprises’ Commodities Coordinator, Alexis Edwards, was one of the leaders that stood up to take the initiative to coordinate and organize the project according to Greg Smith, Challenge Enterprises Warehouse Supervisor. Everyone did an outstanding job during this process, which gives us the pleasure to take this time to recognize a few of the members and organizations that helped make this dream a reality: Frank Sexton of Clay County Sheriff’s Office, Cupid, and Brad from Black Creek Baptist, Karen Reid from Praise Christian Assembly and Pastor Robert Bass of Celebration Church. In addition to these volunteers, several organizations played a major role in volunteering: Clay Chamber of Commerce, Missions of the Dirt Road, The Clay Chamber, Eleven 22, Praise Christian Assembly, Black Creek Baptist, Clay County Sheriff’s Office, Basket Life, Students from Clay High and Saint Leo University, Grace Anglican Church, Celebration Church and Knights of Columbus. Each organization and volunteer demonstrated tremendous efforts to package these boxes for families and individuals in need.