The Christmas Food Drive

"Whatsoever you do to these the least of my brethren, you do so also unto me."  No words could more graphically describe one of the key mission statements and underlying foundations of the Knights of Columbus than charity.  Every Knight who undergoes the ceremonials of the First Degree comes to understand the significance and meaning of what role charity will play in his day-to-day activities both inside and outside of the Council chambers. 

St. Elizabeth Council 8747 now conducts three (3) food drives during the Columbian Year: Easter, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. The effort to collect, sort, bag, and distribute is a monumental task and we want to share with you what that task involves.

The first step in any successful food drive is to collect food. St. Elizabeth Council 8747 sets out large tubs in the vestibule of the Church with signs advertising that our food drive is underway. Coupled with announcements from the bulletin and the pulpit, our Council strives to get the word out to members of our faith community that there is a lot of needy families in our very wealthy Silicon Valley that need help.

After the food is gathered, Knights and their families come to our Council chambers and set up the tables so that we can maximize a small space to accomplish a large task.


By strategically placing tables within the room, we are able to utilize our space to achieve maximum advantage.

Food Drive Chairman, Joe Byrnes, instructs the volunteers to the task at hand. Having done many of these food drives, Brother Joe has devised some ingenious time saving strategies that have sped up the sorting and bagging process guaranteeing that each of the families (19 this go around) will get an even distribution of food items.

Sorting requires that the volunteers set up the food into given categories. E.g., soups are in one group, canned vegetables in another, cereal, rice, macaroni and cheese are divided into yet other groups.

The sorting process must be done carefully so as to give Brother Joe Byrnes a sense of what he has to work with when it comes an equal distribution.

As the sorting process takes place, Brother Joe Byrnes groups the bags by families. Each family has a number (1,2,3,4, etc.) and a given number of bags are assigned to each family. Some families will only get 2 bags of distributed food items, others will get as many as 8 to 10 bags depending on the number of people in that family.

After the sorting process has been completed, food items are now in specific areas where the volunteers can distinguish one food item from another

The next stage in the process is to bag the food. Using a very clever technique, Brother Joe Byrnes divides up the volunteers into teams. Each team is given a group of families. A distribution list is then given to the volunteers which tells them how many of what items should go into what bags. E.g., for canned vegetables, the volunteers distribute 3 cans per bag. On items where there are not as many food items to distribute, there may be only 1 item per family, 1 item into every other bag, or 1 item into every 2nd or 3rd bag.

The end result of this work are bags filled to the top with nonperishable groceries ready for distribution to the needy familes of our area. In addition to these bags of food, our Council will also provide a turkey for each family to help make the Christmas dinner a much more enjoyable event.

In recognition of his efforts, this web site salutes Brother Joe Byrnes who chairs this event and produces great results year and year.  Brother Joe has rightfully earned Knight of the Month, Family of the Month, and Knight of the Year honors for this endeavor.