LAPLACE – The fourth annual L’Observateur “Food for Families” is asking the community to join us in helping the needy this Christmas season.

Our “Food for Families” program is a simple one. We ask you to help donate non-perishable food items, or send in monetary donations that we will use to purchase food, and we will in turn use 100 percent of those donations to give food to needy families.

The employees at L’Observateur do all the work for the program, including boxing and delivering the food personally to those in need.

We get our names to take food boxes to by asking the public to send in nominations of those they know who are in need, and as usual, we end up with usually more names than we can handle.

“This year I hope we have enough donations to help every family that is nominated,” Publisher Kevin Chiri said. “I personally love doing this at Christmas each year. It’s just a small way we can do something for those less fortunate. So I hope we get a lot of help this year for our program.”

From now until Tuesday, December 18, the L’Observateur staff will be looking for donations of rice, pasta, dry cereal, canned good, and any other non-perishable food items. We will also accept monetary donations, which will be used to purchase foods.

Then on Saturday, December 22, employees, family, and friends of the newspaper will personally deliver food boxes created from all the donations. We are looking to surpass the success of last year, when L’Observateur delivered 135 boxes to area families.

Individuals or businesses that would like to participate may mail monetary donations to “Food for Families,” c/o L’Observateur, P.O. Box 1010, LaPlace, La., 70069. Food donations can be dropped off at our newspaper office, located at 116 Newspaper Dr., just off Hwy. 44 (old Main Street).