FOX56: Ensuring No One Goes Hungry, The Wilkes-Barre Community Hosts Holiday Food Drive

November 18, 2025

Wilkes-Barre, PENNSYLVANIA —  On Saturday, Affordable Pennsylvania joined local partners in NEPA in hosting a food drive in Wilkes-Barre to help feed local families, successfully collecting over 2,000 pounds of food to be donated to food banks benefiting the region.

"As a person from a working class, low-income family, I believe it’s important to step up and help when people in our community are in need. The holiday season should be a time of celebration, not struggle - no one in our community should be facing food insecurity, especially at this time of year,” said Emily Singh of Shickshinny, PA. “But it can’t stop at charity and mutual aid. Our congressman, Rob Bresnahan, voted for SNAP cuts that are taking away assistance from working families, while also supporting tariffs that are raising grocery prices. We need Rep. Bresnahan to reverse these cuts and fight for lower costs for NEPA families.”

With the late distribution of SNAP benefits due to the government shutdown this month, many families are facing an even greater struggle to put food on the table. As a result, local food banks across the Commonwealth are seeing a sharp increase in demand as more people are forced to turn to them for help.

Congressman Rob Bresnahan has contributed to an affordability crisis for Pennsylvanians - voting for historic cuts to SNAP, threatening the very fate of federal food assistance in the Commonwealth, and continually supporting Trump’s tariffs that are raising costs, particularly food costs, for working families, small businesses, and American consumers. Of the Pennsylvania delegation that supported these cuts, Bresnahan represents the most SNAP recipients, with over 145,000 constituents who rely on the federal food assistance benefits.

ICYMI: FOX56: Ensuring no one goes hungry, the Wilkes-Barre community hosts Holiday Food Drive

• Food filled the room as volunteers packed and distributed non-perishable items, all coming together with one mission in mind: ensuring no one goes hungry.

• Local organizations, such as Rural Organizing and Affordable PA, hosted a Holiday Food Drive, with community members and volunteers joining in as well.

• According to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the state’s Department of Human Services resumed issuing full SNAP benefits on November 13. Still, Cocher said the earlier delays continue to affect many families, and the demand for food assistance remains high.

• “The delayed SNAP benefits were the main reason we wanted to host this. We actually started planning it before, the government reopened. So, our idea, especially once we saw that SNAP benefits were then delayed, is I think a bunch of us separately had this thought of what are we going to do to support our community members now that all of this is kind of hitting us all at once,” said [organizer Megan] Cocher.

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