New Castle County is sending the Food Bank of Delaware $370,000 for food distribution efforts.
The money comes from the county’s pool of federal American Rescue Plan Act funding and will be split between two Food Bank of Delaware initiatives.
Food Bank of Delaware CEO Cathy Kanefsky says this donation is coming at a critical time.
“As everyone knows, food prices are doing nothing but going up, and sadly the number of people who need us is also going up. The one thing that’s going down is the amount of food that is being donated to us. So that means the Food Bank needs to purchase food, and we can’t purchase it without funding,” she explained.
$250,000 was given to the Food Bank to use at their discretion.
Kanefsky says it will go toward providing food for their numerous partner organizations.
“So it’s St. Patrick’s Center, the YMCA - different big groups that actually have food closets and food pantries that folks that know and trust them go to,” she said.
The idea is to extend the Food Bank’s reach to communities across the state through these partners.
The Food Bank currently partners with over 200 organizations.
The other $120,000 comes from the county’s Building Better Communities initiative and will support mobile food pantry events in the Brookside and Pleasantville neighborhoods.
New Castle County Executive Matt Meyer says these investments reflect what he promised the county would do with its ARPA funding.
“When we got this discretionary funding from the federal government we said let’s invest in communities where violence festers, but let’s not invest in police,” said Meyer. “Let’s invest in communities. Let’s invest in after school programs. Let’s combine with community organizations to see if we can improve housing, reduce food insecurity, and reduce gun violence.”
The funding is expected to support a total of 24 mobile food pantry events between the two neighborhoods.
Sussex County allocated the last $750,000 of its American Rescue Plan Act funding to the Food Bank of Delaware to stock the Food Bank’s Milford facility and distribute food to Sussex County residents.
New Castle County was given approximately $108 million in ARPA funds in 2021.
“We've allocated all of the money. Every dollar is allocated to an agency or organization in the county, or has already been spent,” said Meyer. “But when you allocate money sometimes things are under budget, so we think we may have some money available. We've already been approached by over 30 organizations asking for those leftover funds.”
The deadline to commit the remainder of those funds, if any, is December 31st.