Gov. Nikki Haley and family help pack food boxes at Harvest Hope

After praising the South Carolina’s spirit of compassion in the week after devastating floods, S.C. Gov. Nikki Haley and her family spent time Saturday volunteering to pack food boxes at Harvest Hope Food Bank in Columbia.

“There’s a lot of service that needs to be done to help those families that have lost everything,” Haley said. “This is a way for me to teach my son and my family what volunteerism means and what it means to truly have neighbors helping neighbors.”

Harvest Hope had provided more than 500,000 meals to those in need over the past week, Haley said.

Her husband, Michael, and children, Rena and Nalin, joined Haley in an assembly line stuffing hundreds of boxes with food to be delivered throughout the Palmetto State.

“(Haley) truly embodies making South Carolina strong and showing how caring and loving South Carolina is and how we band together,” Harvest Hope CEO Denise Holland said as she passed cardboard boxes along through the assembly line.

Harvest Hope needs to pack 3,000 to 5,000 boxes of disaster food per day right now, Holland said.

“This is an incredible amount of people who are suffering as a result of this,” Holland said, adding that about 18 percent of South Carolinians face hunger needs on a regular basis without the burden of disaster. “Food supplies are very good. They continue to come in, and we’re going to need them.

“This is a long-term effort. It will take us a long time to get through this and get back to whole.”

This story was originally published October 10, 2015 at 3:11 PM.