MAHONING COUNTY, Ohio - When families in the Mahoning Valley ask the Second Harvest Food Bank for help, there are volunteers behind the scenes making that request possible.

Those volunteers help every step of the way, from building boxes to packing food. 

In fact, donating food and donating time are two key parts to helping the Second Harvest Foodbank feed our valley. 

“The volunteers are the heart of the work here. They're really the ones that make things happen for us, and we couldn't do what we do without them.” said Renee Fuller, associate director of the Second Harvest Food Bank of the Mahoning Valley. 

Some volunteers show up weekly, and donate hours of their time at the food bank.

“They are trained, basically to go through the salvage that we pick up from the stores or things that are donated to us through food drives and things like that, especially through Feed our Valley,” said Fuller.

To prepare for bigger giveaways, it takes getting help from outside groups. 

“When outside groups come, we try to keep it simple for them, and they will do things like those brights, where maybe a can needs labels put on it, or bagging pasta,” said Fuller. “Sometimes we will bag produce. We might bag oranges, grapefruits, maybe potatoes.”

In order to prepare for a giveaway Saturday, groups of volunteers formed an assembly line to create and fill boxes.

Two groups spent hours Thursday building, packing and stacking boxes for the emergency food giveaway at the Trumbull County Fairgrounds.

Ten Armstrong employees volunteering packed over 300 boxes. Volunteer Corinna Ordak has volunteered at the food bank four times. She said it's about how many families their work will help feed.

“Every time I leave here, I feel amazing afterwards, and I just keep wanting to come back and again,” said Ordak.”I love that it's going to put smiles on people's faces. And also, I just love seeing how much that you can get done and how much that it's going to benefit everybody in the community. And that just makes me feel good.”

The second set of volunteers packing hundreds of boxes for the giveaway is the men's bible study group. Fuller refers to the group as the "pasta kings" after packing around one thousand pounds of pasta in two hours.

They started helping at the food bank as a way to make an impact on the valley.

“We didn't want to just be a group of guys that get together once a month, and that's all we do. So service was talked about a lot. So after we found our footing, we started doing some service projects,” said Dave DiBernardi, volunteer with the men’s bible study group.

Over 1,000 emergency boxes were packed by the two groups. Each box will feed a family, meaning the food bank and its volunteers are helping feed over 1,000 families at just one event.

“To have the manpower that it takes to do this back here, it's near impossible for us to do this without their help,” said Fuller

Any group or person interested in volunteering can reach out to the Second Harvest Food Bank of the Mahoning Valley.