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A local staffing agency has donated hundreds of pounds of food to Area in Need Missionary House.

Local Spherion Staffing owner Michael Chalmers and his team partnered with Area in Need Missionary House, a local organization helping individuals out of homelessness through providing food and clothing, for their holiday giveback initiative.

Though Spherion has locations all over the United States, one of the core values of the company is to help out in the areas of their local offices, Chalmers said.

“We have a very strong heritage as a company of giving back locally,” Chalmers said. “One of the things we felt would be vital to our community is to do some level of a give back at the Thanksgiving holidays.”

Chalmers explained that they typically do a financial giveback to a charitable organization around Christmas, but they wanted to do something different for Thanksgiving.

Having done a clothing drive last year, the staffing company chose Area in Need and partnered with them to provide food for families in need this year for Thanksgiving.

Chalmers said the company contributed some of the food, along with employees and community members. He said they ended up providing around 400 pounds of food to Area in Need and distributed to locals in need on Saturday.

The food was primarily canned and boxed goods, but they had a variety of foods for families donated in the drive, Chalmers said.

The drive was also good for connecting with their neighbors on the square. Chalmers said a few of the businesses near them donated to the drive.

Area in Need wanted to do their giveaway on Saturday, so that was the end of the drive in LaGrange, Chalmers said. Other Spherion franchises in other locations are still going, he said.

Chalmers said they plan to give their Christmas financial contribution to Area in Need this year as well.

Locally, Spherion plans to continue the food drive as an annual tradition but didn’t know what to expect when they started.

“This is our first year holding the food drive. I believe this will now be an annual thing that we’ll start to do after the success we had this year,” Chalmers said. “So we didn’t start with an initial goal. We just kind of said we’re going to do it and see what happens.”