The Food Bank of Delaware is conducting its holiday food drive a little differently this year.
“This year our holiday food drive has gone virtual," said Kim Turner, the communications director for the Food Bank. "We have seen significant increases in demand for food assistance. So we are hoping we can use our resources to host more community distributions.”
Turner says traditionally the Food Bank hosts physical food drives, dropping off barrels to organizations and schools across the First State to fill.
This year, there are three ways to help those in need.
People can host an individual fundraiser -raising donations using a personal fundraising page, or put together a team of friends and family to raise money.
The third option is a virtual food drive that mirrors an online shopping experience with shoppers selecting food items and placing them in a shopping cart to check out and make a secure tax-deductible donation to the Food Bank.
Turner says they will still work with groups interested in conducting physical food drives, but they must contact the Food Bank to pick up a barrel and then drop the filled barrel off to one of two Food Bank locations.
Turner says since the coronavirus pandemic began in March, the Food Bank has been on the front lines helping Delawareans struggling to afford food.
"We have hosted - I think we have done about 20 drive-thru….and these are large drive-thru (events) - where we’re serving over 1,000 people. We’ve held 20 of those since the pandemic started," said Turner. "But we - every day- we are out in the community doing what we call pop-up distributions.”
Turner says those pop-up distributions are being done in low-income neighborhoods where residents can drive-up or walk-up to pick-up food for their families.
She says since March, 11 million pounds of food has been distributed, and she expects to exceed last year’s total of 14 million pounds before 2020 is over.
