The Food Bank of Delaware is looking at how it can sustain feeding hungry Delawareans as long as necessary during the COVID pandemic.
The Food Bank of Delaware holds its first series of drive-thru mobile food pantries of 2021 this week.
“We are committed to continuing these distributions," said Food Bank spokeswoman Kim Turner. "We know that the economic impact of the pandemic is going to be here for a while. A lot of people are struggling to make ends meet. So we want to make sure we can provide these additional resources to people.”
Turner says the organization hosted 27 drive-thru mobile food pantries locally in 2020, distributing three million pounds of food.
Turner adds the Food Bank also worked with its network of food pantries across the First State and held on-site events at their Newark and Milford locations.
The latest round of drive-thru mobile pantries starts Monday, Jan 25, at Dover International Speedway at 11 a.m. -- followed by events at Frawley Stadium in Wilmington on Wednesday, Jan 27 at 11 a.m. and Crossroad Community Church in Georgetown on Friday, Jan 29, also at 11 a.m.
Turner says the organization is positioned to keep up these events and others.
“We are thankful that our community has been very generous over this time," said Turner. "We do have the resources to continue to do this at least for a year. We have been fortunate that we have received quite a bit of food from the USDA over the past year through the trade mitigation.”
Turner adds that the Food Bank is also a member of Feeding America and it expects the new Biden Administration will be very supportive of anti-hunger efforts through that collaboration.
She notes that the number of people using drive-thru mobile pantries was extremely high at the start of the pandemic. She says there was a slight decrease over the summer, but increased again last fall.
