Kraft grant will provide new freezers

Six Columbia County churches will benefit from a grant from Kraft Foods.

Golden Harvest Food Bank was recently awarded a $27,500 grant from Kraft Foods, a division of the Phillip Morris family of companies, to purchase freezers for its affiliate agencies.

The freezers are being bought with money from the Kraft Seafood Initiative. One of the main objectives of the initiative is to make frozen seafood more accessible to the needy across the country.

''In the past, Golden Harvest was unable to receive large shipments of fish and seafood due to the fact that food pantries operated by churches and agencies who did not have freezers,'' said Mike Firmin, executive director of Golden Harvest Food Bank.

Firmin said that thanks to the Kraft grant, freezers can be provided to some of the two-state area pantries. As a result, Golden Harvest has agreed to distribute 96,000 pounds of packaged seafood products within the next 12 months to its network of agencies.

In Columbia County, Antioch Baptist Church, Fellowship Baptist Church, Gospel Cathedral, Lighthouse Ministries, New Hope Missionary Baptist Church and Steiner Grove Baptist Church will all receive freezers.