Volunteers from Camden and Rockport with the donated food from last year’s Thanks for Giving food drive. Kerry Leichtman, left, tax assessor for both towns, is one of the main organizers of the charity. Contributed / Thanks for Giving Maine

The annual Thanks for Giving Maine food drive took place at several polling locations across the Lakes Region on Election Day.

The charity has been running every year since 2012, when it was founded by Gina Merry, the assessor in Lyman. Due to the food drive’s proximity to the Thanksgiving holiday, she named it “Thanks for Giving.”

After Merry died in 2016, her husband, Joseph, took over the food drive in her memory. Speaking to the Lakes Region Weekly, he recalled a time where, shortly after his wife’s passing, he was in a meeting with someone in Lyman, waiting for people to join them. Asking her about living in the town, she said to him that she really liked how it was a close-knit community. Every year, she said, they got together and donated to the community.

That gave Merry the idea to expand the food drive to other Maine communities. Realizing that there were several communities that could do with a food drive, Merry, who was the assessor in Standish at the time, got several of his counterparts on board. These included Craig Skelton of South Berwick, Jim Thomas of South Portland, and Kerry Leichtman of Camden and Rockport. The four of them later got Nick Cloutier of Scarborough, who Merry described as being more tech savvy, to join them and after promoting their effort in local papers, other Maine communities became interested.

According to Merry, each community gives the food from the drive to their local pantry. For example, Merry usually coordinates with the York County Food Pantry in Standish. He recalled that last year, the drive was very successful and the Standish pantry couldn’t believe the response from the community.

With Merry getting close to retirement age, Barbara Brewer, Standish’s assistant assessor, is taking a more active role, updating the website and reaching out to other assessors to see if they would be willing to participate. Brewer, who has been supporting Thanks for Giving since 2021, laments that there were more towns participating during the earlier days of the charity, but also notes that some assessors, such as Leichtman, as well as Lauren Asselin of Gray, have been very dedicated in regards to the food drive, participating every year.

“We try to reach out every year to get assessors to participate,” Brewer said, “but it’s really up to them. We will provide support.”

Brewer also provided some information regarding the logistics of the drive. She said that the drive actually starts before Election Day, with a large poster and a large bin for donations during early voting, and in the past, a few canned goods have made it there ahead of the main drive. On Election Day itself, volunteers collect money and food. Brewer noted that monetary donations go more toward helping the food banks sustain themselves than the food itself does. Last year, $300 was raised from Standish alone, with more coming from towns such as Gray and Camden.

The Thanks for Giving Maine food drive was held this year at polling places in the towns of Camden, Gray, Lyman, Rockland, Rockport, Scarborough, South Berwick, South Portland and Standish.