Coronavirus (COVID-19) Virginia Peninsula Foodbank’s Response

April 21, 2020April 24, 2020 HRM Staff COVID-19, virginia peninsula foodbank

By Karen L. Joyner
Chief Executive Officer

Thank you for supporting our mission. We hope that everyone is doing well during this time of urgency and emergency. Our thoughts are with you and your families at this difficult time.

Food banks are essential components to disaster relief response efforts. Because of the support from our community, we are able to continue to serve our current clients and provide additional resources to serve those who are coming to us for the first time because of the COVID-19 health and economic crisis.

We wanted to give you an update on how COVID-19 is impacting our member agencies and our response to the increased need for food assistance:

In addition to many of our regular monthly Mobile Food Pantry Program sites, we are conducting special large-scale community pantry distributions several days a week in a drive-through format to minimize contact and preserve social distancing in order to address a higher number of requests for food assistance. We have been to the parking lots of two stadiums (Hampton and Newport News), a low-income housing complex (Newport News), churches (Hampton and Gloucester), Hampton University, Busch Gardens (Williamsburg/James City County) and in York County. At these distributions, we have served as many as 400+ households, with cars lining up 2 to 3 hours before the distribution starts.
Several of our partner agencies and senior-focused mobile pantries have had to suspend operations temporarily. We are striving to making up for these temporary closures with these mass food distributions.
Currently, we are seeing that at least 68% of these large-scale distribution participants are new, first-time food assistance recipients. Hunger can impact a home without any notice. We have met, for example, a single mom who has been laid off from three jobs in the service industry and a substitute teacher unable to work with schools closed.
Our Neighbor to Neighbor Program, which “rescues” food from grocery stores and other food retailers that would otherwise be wasted is seeing a tremendous decline in food items donated due to high customer demand in stores. Many of our agencies depend heavily on this food. Our partner agencies that are in operation are seeing between 30 and 50% more clients now.
With attendance figures usually exceeding and potentially doubling our largest client participation at a standard mobile pantry site, we are purchasing truckloads of food to meet higher demand.
Our youngest and most vulnerable neighbors in need are most often nourished during the week through school meal programs. With the necessary closure of schools to protect public safety, children and their families are struggling to replace these meals. We are still operating our Food for Kids BackPack Program that provides portable bags of nutritious, child-friendly food currently to over 1,300 children each week so that they will have meals to eat over the weekends. Our Kids Cafe program has converted from hot meals to “Grab and Go” dinner meals. We are providing 175 “Grab and Go” dinner meals per day that are distributed at five sites throughout our community.

When a greater need requires a greater response, you are making a difference to us and to those who face food insecurity. Thank you for walking with us on this journey of hope and for coming together in a challenging time of need.