Boy Scouts Set for 'Good Turn' for Area Food Pantries

For the 25th straight year, Knox Trail Council Boy Scouts soon will do a Good Turn for area food pantries.

This year, the demand on the pantries has taken an unexpected turn, event Chairman Ed Behn of Westborough said Monday.

A speaker at September’s Scouting for Food, Good Turn for America kickoff meeting “definitely said they continue to see growing needs,” Behn said.

“They’re seeing a lot more underemployed now: people that had had jobs, but now they’re not making the same, so they need to supplement. So, they’re seeing a wider audience, a non-traditional audience,” Behn said.

Collecting more than 100 tons of food is the goal of this year’s drive, which starts Saturday, Nov. 3, he said.

Boy and Cub Scouts will go door-to-door in the council's 21 communities, including Wellesley, that day, delivering donation bags donated by Price Chopper.

Westborough Scouts, though, instead will leave special notes.

“First of all, it’s quicker. The bags will blow around. It’s also something easy you can put up on your refrigerator,” Behn explained.

“What we found was that if you give people one bag, was the message, ‘We want one bag back’? If you just say, ‘We’re doing a Scouting for Food Drive,’ very often people will give you a couple of bags.

“People are very generous, and we’ll get multiple bags.”

The Scouts will collect the donations on Nov. 10 and bring them to area food pantries.

The Knox Trail Council collected just under 100 tons of donations last year, Behn said.

The council collected 100 tons in 2010, the 100th anniversary of Scouting.

Behn is chairing the drive for the third straight year.

“I’ve always had, just personally, a strong feeling about feeding the poor. I just personally feel that it’s a Good Turn,” said Behn, who said he has participated in scouting for about 20 years as adult, including serving as Westborough’s Troop 100 scoutmaster from 1999 to 2004.

“The Boy Scouts, as you know, do a Good turn. And this is a national good turn.”