AUBURN – The Maine Credit Unions’ Campaign for Ending Hunger and the Good Shepherd Food-Bank celebrated the one-year anniversary of Maine’s first Food Mobile on Oct. 5 at the food bank.

Maine’s credit unions contributed $5,000 and announced a $15,000 contribution that will help the Food Mobile to deliver food to pantries across the state for the next two years.

Also at the celebration, Good Shepherd and Maine’s credit unions announced that the Food Mobile delivered more than 300,000 pounds of food to pantries in every Maine county in its first year.

“One year ago this week, Maine’s credit unions joined with Good Shepherd as the major funding source of the state’s first-ever and only Food Mobile. We are thrilled at the numbers of food that it has been able to deliver in its first year and know that the Food Mobile has been a significant benefit to food pantries who otherwise may not have been able to access supplies to feed thousands of Maine people.

“As only the third Food Mobile in the country, Maine’s credit unions are proud to have not only helped put supply the food that this truck has delivered, but also of the difference it has made to hunger organizations in communities, many of them rural, all across the state,” said Jon Paradise, governmental and public affairs manager for the Maine Credit Union League.

The Food Mobile is able to deliver 10,000 pounds of food on each trip and has made multiple deliveries during the past year to food pantries in each of Maine’s 16 counties.

Paradise added, “The Food Mobile has proven to be an invaluable resource to Maine’s food pantries, not only because of the rise of gas and oil prices, but through out the winter months the truck was able to go to the more remote food pantries that may have otherwise had trouble sending someone to pick up food.”

Since 1990, the Maine Credit Unions’ Campaign for Ending Hunger has raised more than $2 million to help end hunger in Maine. For more information, visit www.mainecul.org.