MIDDLEPORT — Church youth groups and the Middleport-Pomeroy Rotary Club will distribute grocery bags throughout Middleport and Pomeroy next weekend, hoping they will be filled with items for local food banks.

The annual Neighbors Helping Neighbors canned food drive, sponsored by Rotary and the youth groups of the Middleport Church of Christ, Rejoicing Life Church and the Meigs Cooperative Parish, will place plastic bags on doorknobs in Middleport and Pomeroy, and re-collect them — hopefully filled with non-perishable food items — the following weekend.

The filled bags can be left at the front door or on the front porch no later than 8 a.m. on Feb. 21. People living outside the Middleport-Pomeroy community may bring donations to the Middleport Church of Christ between 8 a.m. and noon on Feb. 21.

All proceeds will go to benefit local food banks and pantries to feed hungry families in our community. The canned food drive coincides with the 30-Hour Famine, an event sponsored by World Vision, a global relief organization. During the Famine, the teens from the Middleport Church of Christ, Rejoicing Life, and the community youth group choose to go without food for 30 hours in order to raise money and awareness of world hunger.

The youth will begin their fast after breakfast on Friday and will break the fast with lunch on Saturday. People who wish to make donations to World Vision or the 30-Hour Famine may contact Dodger Vaughan at 992-2914.