By Alaina Denean Deshazo | The Selma Times-Journal

For the last three years children have been able to get into the Central Alabama Fair for free by bringing a canned good item for the Christian Outreach Alliance.

This year, an estimated 2,000 pounds of food was collected on Kids Day at the fair to be handed out to people in the community who qualify for the assistance.

“It means a lot to us from a financial point of view because that’s a lot of food that we don’t have to buy,” said Buddy Perkins, a member of the board of directors at the Christian Outreach Alliance. “So then we can use the money we have to pay utilities and to buy different kinds of food.”

Many people think the outreach is the local food bank, but it’s a Christian volunteer group that works strictly off of donations and local volunteers.

“It’s a faith based organization,” Perkins said. “Nobody has to do this, and no one is getting paid to do it. So it’s totally faith based.”

Perkins said the alliance gives out around 250 bags to qualifying residents each week, and each bag contains around nine pounds of food.

“We estimate that as many as nine people benefit from the average bag,” Perkins said.

Perkins said the amount of food collected at the fair would equal out to around one week’s worth of food, which will help them save money for other necessities.

“It’s a really great gesture to be thought of that way, because they could do anything they wanted to with that, so the fact that they think of us, makes us sort of feel that we’ve validated the mission that we have,” Perkins said. “Every year it exceeds what I expect.”

Russell Haskell, member of the Lion’s Club and president of the fair, said giving back is what the club and the fair is about, so helping even more people through donating canned goods is just an added benefit.

“It’s good to see the support we get for the community, because everything we do is given back to the community,” Haskell said. “It’s a very humbling experience to know that I’m apart of something that makes the world a better place.”

Perkins said the outreach is always looking for donations, and can accept money, cans and even plastic bags.

“It’s a good thing for the community that they also have a way to give back,” Haskell said. “The community kind of gives back to itself.”