The quest for funds is on, as food banks seek to aid millions of Americans stricken by economic fallout from the coronavirus. With donated food slowing to a trickle, demand skyrocketing and the volunteer workforce dwindling, food banks are amping up their appeals to individual donors, while also exploring new…
Posts published in “Covid-19”
Eric Cooper, CEO of San Antonio Food Bank, became the public face of the unprecedented need facing the nation’s food banks when he was interviewed this morning on NBC’s Today show, following an epic distribution that delivered a reported one million pounds of food to about 10,000 families last Thursday.…
A quick look at the home page of Yolo Food Bank’s website underscores a main mission of its Covid-19 response: to get food to the elderly and vulnerable who are stuck at home. In stepping up to meet the needs of low-income quarantined individuals, Yolo is taking on one of…
With about one-third of the food pantries across Toronto having closed, Daily Bread Food Bank has begun distributing food from public libraries, taking advantage of their book-processing center, trucks and temporarily out-of-work librarians. Four libraries have begun distributing food and a total of nine are expected to, thanks to partnerships…
Food banks may have gotten an extra $450 million for emergency food in the federal coronavirus aid package passed last week, but it’s not nearly enough. Feeding America says its network of member food banks will need $1.4 billion in additional resources over the next six months, representing a 30%…
After 15 years at the aid organization CARE, where he confronted conflict, earthquakes, tsunamis and other disasters, Thomas Reynolds, the CEO of Northwest Harvest in Seattle, understood the “absolute” importance of being prepared for the Covid-19 virus. So early on, he did what you do in these situations and devised…
Jon Stepanian had some great ideas about how to impose social distancing at the five large weekly food distributions he oversees throughout Long Island and Brooklyn, including having clients show up within certain time periods, depending on their age. Those good intentions, however, have not necessarily translated into streamlined distributions…
To protect the health of its senior volunteers during the Covid-19 crisis, Three Square Food Bank has instituted a top-to-bottom reorg of its network of about 160 pantries and agencies. In the space of about six hours on Monday, March 16, the Las Vegas-based food bank devised a plan that…
Michael Guerra of San Antonio Food Bank was sitting in a meeting about the food bank’s coronavirus contingency plan when he thought back to a chance encounter he’d had that morning: a food-insecure client of the food bank was lamenting the inability to acquire reserve food, when it was already…