DEAR SUN SPOTS: Could you please tell us if Hannaford grocery stores will be having their special food packages for needy people?

Also, does Walmart have a special fund for the needed holiday turkeys?

Also, the person who wrote in to start a fund for needed items for babies (Oct. 12) should contact Hope Haven Gospel Mission; they have a fund. — No Name, Canton

ANSWER: Sun Spots emailed with Eric Blom, external communications manager for Hannaford Supermarkets, who wrote that:

“Our Helping Hands boxes are in stores right now. Each costs $10 and contains food staples that go a long way toward feeding a family for a week. Customers can either leave the box at the store, which will deliver it to the local food pantry, or make the donation in person.”

Eric also sent Sun Spots the following additional information about the program:

Hannaford Helps Fight Hunger is a partnership between the supermarket and its customers to provide food and money donations to local pantries and regional food banks. Donations benefit the 14.7 percent of Maine residents who were found, in a recently published United States Department of Agriculture report, to be “food insecure,” which means people without consistent access to all the nutritious food they need.

Hannaford Helps Fight Hunger has three parts:

* Hannaford Helping Hands: Customers purchase a box of food staples for $10 and choose whether to have the box delivered to the local pantry or to donate it personally. As thanks for the donation, each customer receives a book containing more than $20 in coupons. Last year, Hannaford customers donated 75,000 Helping Hands boxes.

* Register Donation: From Dec. 2 through Dec. 31, customers may donate money to their state food bank, in $5 increments, right at the register. Last holiday season, Hannaford customers made $99,437 in register donations.

*Buy One, Give One: From Nov. 25 through Dec. 15, customers can trigger Hannaford donations to food banks by purchasing a particular product on specific days. For each item purchased, Hannaford will donate an identical product to the state or regional food bank. Last year, Hannaford donated 68,431 boxes of spaghetti, 40,542 cans of tuna and 35,164 cans of soup through this initiative.

Each Hannaford store, including the 56 in Maine, determines what local food pantries to support. Stores compete with one another to encourage donations, and those supermarkets with the highest level of giving receive additional cash donations from Hannaford to be contributed locally.

Since 2008, the program has contributed a total of more than $3.5 million in food, customer cash gifts and Hannaford cash donations to local food pantries and food banks.

Sun Spots looked online and called area Walmarts in search of a similar program but didn’t find anything in Maine. If she missed something or other stores have food-for-the-needy programs, please let her know.

DEAR SUN SPOTS: My Oct. 13 letter looking for Supovitz relatives had incorrect information. Further family research revealed that the Supovitz “cousins” I’m looking for would be related through Leah “Lillian” Supovitz, not Moshe, as he took his wife’s maiden name before arriving from Russia.

Leah died in the late 1920s in Massachusetts. But they all did, for a time, live in Lewiston, then moved to Massachusetts.

Moshe’s family name was Kabachnick. Moshe was a horse and buggy/sled peddler. Any Supovitzes out there who are aware of an ancestor named Leah, born approximately 1858? It appears she used the name “Gordon” on a census as her maiden name, which may have been the name of a family friend. Thank you. — Linda (Supovitz) Zahavi , zahavi3@comcast.net, 503-231-8895

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