Submitted Photo From left are Michael Santangelo, Libbey Youngberg and Jackson Egan.

A local merchant understands the struggle that small businesses and the Chautauqua County community have gone through. Despite only having a handful of employees, they have looked for any possible way to give back to the community they are in. From Nov. 19 to Dec. 9, Sherwin Williams in Dunkirk held its first food drive to contribute to this effort.

All in all, the branch collected 320 pounds of non-perishable canned goods that were sorted in house and distributed out to the Partners in Kind Traveling Pantry, which resides in Cassadaga, the Chautauqua County Rural Ministries Food Pantry, and the Forestville Food Pantry. For store manager Libbey Youngberg, the effort to help out really started during the Small Business Revolution.

“Everyone wanted to spruce up their businesses during the Small Business Revolution,” Youngberg said. “We’re also a small business so we understand the challenges we’re all faced with, so we wanted to help out that way.”

It started with them donating paints or supplies to various events locally, and has since grown into this and more. They’ve also made efforts for Breast Cancer Awareness, offering ribbons and a free mum in store to honor loved ones on top of their other endeavors. Because the store is small and the employees are local, they deeply feel their community ties.

“We all live locally and our friends and family live locally,” Youngberg said.

Food drives were held at many different Sherwin Williams branches in Western New York, as the Buffalo and Rochester stores also donated to pantries in those areas. But because the Dunkirk one is the only one around northern Chautauqua County, they got to spread it out where they wanted.

Youngberg said she was highly pleased with the turnout for the event, especially with it being the first one. Youngberg did a lot of the legwork for spreading word of the event on her own personal social media outlets.

“I posted it on my own Facebook and sent out some emails to customers,” Youngberg said. “There’s a community group called Trade Stuff Fredonia where people post things for trade and a lot of people came forward from that group to bring donations.”

Youngberg is also helping facilitate donations to White Whiskers Senior Dog Sanctuary, which is on the verge of being open. They are asking for various handmade goods, which Youngberg said she’d be taking to the event organizer in Buffalo. If anyone would like to donate, they can drop items off at Sherwin Williams, which is open Monday through Friday from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m., Saturday 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Sunday 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Youngberg added that Sherwin Williams does not accept nor give out monetary gifts, meaning all donations made to anything they do, or anything they give back to the community, has to be in the form of items from the store or for the community.