There is an enormous difference between saying "let's help the poor" and placing, into a family's hands, a basket assembled with care. The first is a good intention. The second is service. And the Club was made for the second.
Hunger is not a distant number. According to the II VIGISAN, from the PENSSAN Network, 125.2 million Brazilians were living with some degree of food insecurity between 2021 and 2022, and 33.1 million were truly going hungry. Many of these people live in your neighborhood, study at your Pathfinder's school, sit near you on Sabbath.
This guide shows how your Unit organizes a food drive from beginning to end: setting a goal, building the collection point, joining forces with ASA and the House of Friendship, sorting, assembling the baskets and — the step many people forget — delivering with dignity. At the end, you will find a poster template, a tracking spreadsheet and how to integrate everything into the Units' scoring.
Start with the goal: what exactly do you want to achieve?
"Let's collect food" is not a goal. It's a wish. A goal is a number, a deadline and a destination. Before any poster, sit down with the Counselor and answer three questions: how many baskets will we assemble, by when, and for whom?
A good starting point for a small Unit is 10 baskets in 4 weeks. Each food basket runs around 12 to 15 kilos of non-perishables. Do the math backward: 10 baskets of 13 kg are 130 kg. If the Club has 40 people among Pathfinders, leaders and parents, that's a little over 3 kg per person. Sounds impossible? It's not. It's a well-communicated food drive.
Write the goal somewhere visible — a poster with a thermometer that rises each week works better than any speech. When the Pathfinder sees the bar climb from 40 to 80 kg, they want to bring more. A goal you can't see motivates no one.
Also define the destination BEFORE you start, not after. Collecting without knowing who it's going to creates a pile of idle supplies, expiring rice and a discouraged volunteer. We'll close this point in the delivery section.
The collection point: where, how and who takes care of it
The collection point is the logistical heart of the campaign. It needs to be visible, safe and have a person in charge with a first and last name. The church is the natural place: high flow of people on Sabbath, a covered space and a Unit that can rotate shifts.
Choose a dry corner, away from direct sun and humidity — supplies spoil. Use sturdy cardboard boxes or labeled bins: "NON-PERISHABLE", "HYGIENE", "EXPIRED (discard)". Yes, you will receive expired items, and it's better to have somewhere to separate them on the spot than to mix them with what's good.
Assign a Pathfinder on duty at each service, with a clipboard and the tracking spreadsheet. They weigh, record and thank. This simple gesture of weighing in front of the donor does two things: it provides transparency and feeds the goal thermometer in real time.
Arrange it with the secretary or the deacon responsible for the space BEFORE. A collection point that appears by surprise creates friction with the church. A five-minute conversation with whoever cares for the building avoids weeks of wear and tear.
Partnership with ASA and the House of Friendship: don't do it alone
Here is the most common mistake: the Club tries to shoulder everything alone and reinvents a wheel that has been turning for decades. The Adventist Solidarity Action (ASA) is the local church's arm that already does organized social assistance — food donation, baskets, clothing — and almost every church has a team or a person in charge.
Reach out to your church's ASA coordination before launching the campaign. It usually has three things the Club doesn't have on its own: a registry of families already visited, sorting experience and the legitimacy to deliver. Adding the Pathfinders' enthusiasm to ASA's structure multiplies the result.
The House of Friendship, when it exists in your church, is the physical space and the team that serves those who come asking for help. That's often where the list of who truly needs it is. Align with them on who will receive the baskets, so there's no overlap — two teams delivering to the same family while another is left out.
If your church doesn't have an active ASA, the Club can be the spark that reactivates it. Talk to the Director and the pastor. A well-run Club campaign usually wakes the whole church up to service.
The Club also works with ADRA on larger actions; see how this works on our page about ADRA and the Club.
Read alsoWinter clothing drive: club guideWhat to collect: the list that avoids an unbalanced basket
A good basket is not a full basket — it's a balanced basket. It does little good to receive twenty packs of pasta and no beans. Publicize a specific list, not a generic "bring food". The clearer the request, the better the donation.
Prioritize long-shelf-life non-perishables and hygiene items, which rarely show up in donations and are sorely missed. The table below organizes the request into groups:
| Group | Items |
|---|---|
| Base | Rice, beans, pasta, flour, cornmeal |
| Complement | Oil, sugar, salt, coffee, powdered milk, tomato paste |
| Non-perishable protein | Canned sardines, tuna, eggs (if delivery is quick) |
| Hygiene | Soap, toothpaste, toilet paper, sanitary pads |
| Cleaning | Bar soap, dish detergent |
Always ask people to check the expiration date when donating. And make clear what NOT to accept: opened food, expired items, homemade food without packaging, medicine. This protects the recipient and avoids disposal work later.
Sanitary pads and toilet paper deserve highlighting on the poster. They are items that extreme poverty cuts first and that no one remembers to donate. A Club attentive to this delivers dignity, not just calories.
Sorting and assembly: from the pile of bags to the finished basket
The day to organize everything has come. Set aside an afternoon, call the Units and turn the mess into baskets. Sorting has a golden rule: separate first, assemble later. Never assemble while you separate — you lose control of the stock.
Set up three stations. At the first, the Pathfinders open the bags and separate by group (base, hygiene, cleaning) on tables, checking each item's expiration date. Whatever is expired or opened goes straight to the discard box. At the second, everything is weighed and the real total is recorded on the spreadsheet. At the third, each basket is assembled following a standard list so they all end up similar.
Standardizing the basket matters for fairness: no family should visibly receive less than another. Make a "model basket" and put it on the wall as a reference. A Counselor checks each one before closing it.
Take the moment to teach. While they weigh and assemble, the younger Pathfinders learn organization, practical math and — without any speech — the value of serving. Many community-area Honors ask for exactly this kind of concrete activity.
If there are leftover items that don't complete a basket (a loose pack, a stray bar of soap), don't force it. Gather everything into an "extra kit" and give it to ASA for the next action. Organized leftovers are a reserve; leftovers tossed in a corner are waste.
Dignified delivery: the step that separates charity from service
This is the most important point of the guide, and the easiest to get wrong. Delivering a basket can humiliate or honor the recipient — it depends entirely on how you do it. The goal is not the photo of the Club smiling with the basket in hand. The goal is for the family to stand tall, with their respect preserved.
Deliver to registered families, referred by ASA or the House of Friendship, and whenever possible at the person's home or in a private meeting — not in a public line where everyone sees who is in need. Go in pairs, wearing your scarf, polite, unhurried. Call the person by name. Ask how they are before mentioning the basket.
Take extra care with photos. Never photograph the recipient without asking clear permission, and never post the face of someone in need just to show off service on social media. If you want to document the action, photograph the assembly, the boxes, the backs of the Pathfinders working — never someone else's shame. Dignity is worth more than engagement.
Teach this to the Pathfinders as practical doctrine. Jesus said, in Matthew 25:35 (NIV): "For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in." He identifies with the recipient. To mistreat someone who is hungry is to mistreat Christ. This is the Adventist heart of service, presented here with respect for every Pathfinder and every family, whatever their faith.
One-off collection vs. continuous program: which is yours?
Every campaign starts as a one-off, and there is nothing wrong with that. The one-off collection is an action with a beginning, middle and end: you aim at a date (an Easter, a year-end, a neighborhood emergency), collect, assemble and deliver. It is excellent for mobilizing, teaching and responding to an urgent need. It is the entry step.
The continuous program is another level. Instead of an explosion, it's a flow: a permanent collection point at the church, a monthly delivery to a fixed group of families, a spreadsheet that runs through the year. It demands more commitment — and transforms much more. A family doesn't eat once; it eats every month. A neighborhood realizes the Club didn't just show up for the photo and vanish.
How to decide? Start one-off, evaluate and, if there's stamina, convert it into a continuous one. The sign that you're ready is simple: if, once the campaign ends, the Pathfinders ask "when's the next one?", you already have a program being born. Don't force the continuous one without engaged people — a program that dies in the third month frustrates more than it helps.
The spiritual basis of the continuous program is in Isaiah 58. God promises, in verse 10 (NIV): "and if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness." To spend yourself is a word of constancy, not of a single event. And Proverbs 19:17 (NIV) sums up the investment: "Whoever is kind to the poor lends to the Lord, and he will reward them for what they have done." This is a service that never runs a loss.
Want to turn this into a permanent Club project? See how to structure it on our page about community service.