Unions members who work at the Sappi Fine Paper in Skowhegan raised $15,854 during its annual Christmas Dinner Harvest drive and delivered Christmas dinners and donations to local area food banks recently.

United Steelworkers Local 9 member with members of three other local unions at Sappi have been working to raise the money to provide meals to families in need and donations to community food cupboards for Christmas. Union members loaded 11 trucks and two trailers to deliver food to 11 community food banks and delivered 100 complete Christmas Dinners. The towns include Fairfield, Vassalboro, Waterville, Oakland, Skowhegan, Mercer, Smithfield, Madison, Solon, Starks and Farmington.

In addition to the funds raised by union members, donation were contributed by Fairfield grocer the Village Market, Sappi Fine Paper and Associated Grocers of New England.

“We’re so glad to be able to help out families in our community who may be struggling to make ends meet this holiday season. We were able to purchase an incredible amount of food, we filled 11 trucks completely, an 18 foot trailer, and a 12 foot trailer. We have already heard back from a few of the food banks saying thank you, they didn’t expect to receive so much,” Patrick Carleton of Chesterville, a paper maker at Sappi and president of United Steelworkers Local 9, said in a news release.

“It gets better every time, it was very successful, everyone was very happy. We want to help the community out. This was a big effort from a lot of people working together,” Cindy Rancourt, recording secretary of United Steelworkers Local 9, said in the release.

In addition to the Christmas dinners and food cupboard donations, the members also purchase and deliver comfort items to the Veterans Volunteer Services at Togus. These items include winter socks, shampoo, soap, shaving cream, razors and electric shavers, gas cards, Hannaford cards for groceries, mittens, hats, light jackets, sweatshirts and a few games. Donations were delivered to Togus last week.

Union volunteers met at the Village Market on Main Street in Fairfield where they purchased and loaded food and drove it to the USW Local 4-9 Union Hall. It was then divided up, loaded onto trucks, and went out to the communities

After the trucks were loaded, the Christmas Harvest Drive Committee held their Annual Meeting to start planning for next year.