The drive comes at a critical time, with the holiday season bringing increased financial pressures from higher heating costs, school breaks and holiday meals
Local Boy Scout troops delivered over 17,000 pounds of food to the Keystone Opportunity Center food pantry Saturday, November 15 as part of the Boy Scouts of America’s “Scouting for Food” drive.
One of the nation’s largest annual food drives, “Scouting for Food” partners Boy Scout troops with local food pantries to support families experiencing food insecurity. As part of the event, Scouts collect and distribute food donations from community members, after which volunteers sort and organize the items.
“It comes from the neighbors,” said Kyle Foster, Keystone Opportunity Center’s food pantry manager. “The week before, the Scouts will go out to all the neighborhoods and leave a bag and a piece of paper on the door [advertising] the drive, and the next Saturday, they’ll go back and pick up the bags.”
“And this food we’re getting today will go back out until the community, and it will likely all be gone by January 1,” said Brandon Trombetta, Keystone’s Executive Director.
A critical time
The drive comes at a critical time, with the holiday season bringing increased financial pressures from higher heating costs, school breaks and holiday meals. The need this year is particularly urgent, notes Keystone, due to the disruption and reduction of SNAP benefits during the government shutdown.
“We have seen a 23% increase in the amount of families we’re served in the third quarter of 2025 versus 2024,” said Foster. “We are seeing an extreme intake in new families, people whom we’ve never seen, people who haven’t been here in years. So it’s definitely a difficult situation.”
“We have new families coming to us every week looking for ways to feed their family, because the money that they used to take in and put towards their rental costs now has to go towards food,” said Trombetta. “So this drive is incredibly important. In the long run, it helps people stay in their homes.”
The urgency has been compounded by the loss of over $25,000 in State Food Purchase Program funds during the state budget impasse, which the pantry uses to buy the bulk of its protein.
“Unfortunately, we will not have any access to those funds to be able to stock items on our shelf, so food drives like this are super important because it allows our pantry to receive a variety of food on demand,” said Foster.
Both Foster and Trombetta stressed that hunger is a hidden epidemic in Montgomery County and that “Scouting for Food” is critical to meeting the need in the community, particularly during the holiday season.
“There are a lot of families living in a very precarious situation, and one fluctuation to anything they have going on, the first thing they do is cut food expenses,” said Trombetta. “Hunger is the number one driving factor in low-income circles, and November is traditionally the highest food need month of the year.”
“It’s your neighbor, the person behind you in line at the grocery store; it’s anybody,” said Foster. “1 in 9 people will experience some kind of food insecurity, and one in every two Americans will be on SNAP benefits at least once in their life. So drives like this are essential.”
This year’s drive ultimately delivered 17,200 pounds of food to Keystone, up from 11,000 pounds last year. Trombetta expressed immense gratitude to the Scouts as well as Keystone staff and volunteers for the event’s success.
“The success of this food drive included many people from across the community,” said Trombetta. “I truly appreciate everyone that made this event a success.”
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