You may have seen the billboards around town from the Atlanta Community Food Bank that say, “food pantry in a snap.”
The food bank’s CEO told Channel 2 anchor Jovita Moore that it’s now using text messaging to connect people with the resources they need.
“We at the Atlanta Community Food Bank are trying to get more food to more people, right now as we continue to respond to this pandemic,” Atlanta Community Food Bank CEO Kyle Waide said. “Part of that means we’ve got to make it easy for people to find where they can go access food assistance.”
“How great has the need been in this past year?” Moore asked Waide.
“You know, this pandemic has created a level of financial and food stress that is really unprecedented. We’ve seen an extraordinary growth in demand for food assistance. We think there are 30% to 40% more people who need help today than did prior to the pandemic,” Waide said. “The majority of the people who are newly food insecure, are actually kids in homes that have experienced job losses or other kind of disruptions.”
Waide said because of the pandemic, the food bank has had to get out a lot more food.
“We’re providing about 65% more food than we did prior to the pandemic. And we think we’re going to have to do that for many months to come,” Waide said.
He told Moore that they’ve been able to keep up with the demand by an extraordinary amount of financial support from the community.
“Just since, you know, the middle of March, we’ve provided somewhere around 95 million pounds of food to people in need around the community. And we’re not slowing down. We’re continuing to provide a lot of food,” Waide said.
If you or someone you know needs a little help from the Atlanta Community Food Bank, you can text “findfood” to 1-888-976-2232. If you speak Spanish, then text “comida” to the same number.
You will get a text asking for your zip code and then it will provide you with a list of three food pantry locations nearby.
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