Puritan Medical and Hardwood Products donate to Piscataquis Regional Food Center
Hardwood Products Co., LP donated a check in the amount of $20,000 to Piscataquis Regional Food Center (PRFC) of Dover-Foxcroft in a ceremony at Puritan’s new Pittsfield manufacturing facility on Dec. 21. The company is also matching up to $5,000 from employees for a possible total donation of $30,000.
“At this difficult time when so many people are feeling the strain of food insecurity, we thought that supporting the PRFC was vitally important,” according to Timothy Templet, executive VP of sales for Puritan. “We feel strongly about supporting our community and we understand that food insecurity is at an all-time high.”
The PRFC is a non-profit organization whose mission is to connect people with sources of healthy food.
“We’re working with community pantries, farms and the Good Shepherd Food Bank to create a new model to provide comprehensive services to people who are food insecure,” according to Erin Callaway, executive director of PRFC. “Every year, we move over half a million pounds of food to thousands of individuals and families. In response to COVID-19, PRFC conducted four “mega’ distributions between Augusta and November of 1,000 emergency food boxes plus thousands of pounds of locally sourced produce. Each mega distribution provided more than 50,000 pounds of food to as many as 2000 individuals from 40 towns across Piscataquis and Penobscot counties.”
PRFC distributes foods through their FarmShare for HomeBound delivery program, the monthly commodity supplemental food program operated by the Eastern Area Agency on Aging. They also conduct mobile distributions where they take a loaded box truck out to communities to do a small drive-through distribution in towns that do not have access to a local pantry, and they do their occasional ‘mega’ distributions where they moved as much as 50,000 pounds of shelf-stable food and fresh product to as many as 2000 people in three hours. They also provide climate-controlled storage for regional farms, plus space for them to sort and pack their produce if they do not have the capacity at their own location.
With over 100 years of history, Hardwood Products and Puritan are in Guilford and Pittsfield. Puritan was recently named Inc. Magazine’s Company of the Year for 2020 due to its efforts to fight the COVID-19 pandemic.