NEWPORT NEWS, Va. (WAVY) — Christmas came a little early on the Peninsula on Tuesday.

While others were out making decisions on last minute holiday gifts, the Peninsula Foodbank was trying to help some to not make difficult Christmas decisions.

The food drive was one four of events like of its kinda held in the area on Tuesday.

“There’s a tremendous amount of need in our community, the Hampton Roads area actually has the highest food insecurity rate in the entire state of Virginia at 14 percent,” said Michelle Benson with the Peninsula Foodbank. “And what that translates to on the Peninsula is almost 75,000 individuals who are defined as being food insecure. That means they don’t have enough food to lead a normal healthy lifestyle.”

Dani Cuzzo works with folks who need a little extra help. She drove Nicole Arthur to the event.

“I see first hand how much of a difference it makes to someone who may not have any food in their fridge or anything in their pantry, and now they can have something for their family to eat,” Cuzzo said.

Arthur agreed. “It’s an actual blessing for the families around here, and for myself, they really do help everybody,” Arthur said.

If you’d like to help out, they’d like you to bring a different kind of green though.

“With every dollar we receive we can provide four meals, and so we just have a lot of buying power, and we can stretch a dollar way more than the average consumer.” Benson said. “We just want to get as much food into the community before the Christmas holidays as possible so that everybody can have a good holiday season.”

See the Article on WAVY10 here http://wavy.com/2017/12/19/peninsula-food-drive-a-blessing-for-local-families/