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MARTINSVILLE

Morgan County 4-H Poultry Club members are not just selling their chickens at the fair auction this year, they are donating the meat from the auction to Manna Mission in Martinsville to give back to the community.

Poultry club president, Julie Saucerman, 16, said by giving the meat from the chickens they do not sell, or the ones that buyers do not want, to Manna Mission they are helping the community.

“For years, we just sold them,” Saucerman said. “Nobody ever benefitted from it. This way the community can benefit.”

Saucerman said the club would like to do this again next year.

Club adviser Phyllis Saucerman, Julie’s mother, said the concept of helping the Mission was the students’ idea. She said they were the ones that organized it.

“They wanted to help,” she said. “ A lot of what 4-H is about is giving back to the community and they though this would be the way.”

Lydia Farr, 15, said one of things being apart of 4-H does is prepare members for their career, like farming, if that’s what they choose, as well as other life values.

“It’s good for kids to learn how to help other people,” she said, “and how to be generous.”

Pastor Tom Tackett, director of Manna Mission, said they have had 4-H groups and other organizations donate meat or other food supplies to the Mission before, much like the Poultry Club is doing this summer.

“Right now we’re feeding more people than in our history,” Tackett said.

We’re doing about 50,000 meals a year — 150 to 200 meals a day. We do delivery to the elderly and homebound people every day of the week . we house at any given time, I think we have 12 guys that are living here at the mission now. So all of that stuff (the meat and donations) is used to prepare the meals.”

Tackett said the Poultry Club choosing to donate the meet from their birds shows awareness of the need in the community.

“Well, it’s an absolute blessing, not only to us, but it’s far reaching,” Tackett said. “There are a lot of people that we’re reaching. It’s through individuals and groups like this that our support comes from.”

Young people, Tackett said, have been a driving force for donations and support for Manna Mission.

“Almost every year, this will be the beginning of our 24th year, there’s a greater awareness of a greater need, I think people are aware of that. The young people are the key to what we do. The reality is when the kids get involved in something . they get it done. They have the energy. They are just really what supports a lot of the different things we’ve done throughout the years.”

Phyllis Saucerman, who is also superintendent of the poultry club and showing, said Home Bank offered to finance having the meat processed professionally so it would be ready to donate to Manna Mission.

Lisa Arnold, chief operations officer for the local Home Banks, said it’s a great service that the 4-H Poultry Club members want to do for their community.

“The fact that we’ve got young people who want to serve the community, that was very exciting for us, so we were very happy to offer support to them,” Arnold said. “They’re thinking about people in the community that have needs. That was really inspiring to hear what they were going to do.”