Second Harvest cuts mobile food deliveries
Posted by Darryl D. Smith on June 27, 2008
June 27, 2008
The Tennessean
This is going to be a tough day for Carolyn Pociask.
Pociask, the director of missions for the Lascassas Church Food Bank in Rutherford County, has to tell her clients that a mobile food pantry from Nashville will be cutting services in the rural community.
“It’s going to be devastating,” she said. “I don’t know how they’ll take it.”
Second Harvest Food Bank is dramatically scaling back its Mobile Pantry program, which serves 46 counties including Davidson County. Rising food and gas prices are forcing Second Harvest organizers to cut deliveries in needy communities. The organization will continue to serve some areas on a limited basis but less often.
“It’s certainly not a lack of interest, but it all comes down to dollars and cents,” said Kelli Garrett, program services manager of the Second Harvest Food Bank.
The Mobile Pantry started two years ago as an effort to reach families in rural areas with limited transportation and communities where help agencies were sparse. During the first year, the program made 20 trips a year around the region.
Then, in October 2007, Second Harvest got a $350,000 grant from the state Department of Human Services. That allowed the program to expand and the Mobile Pantry made more than 120 trips to the Middle Tennessee region. But that was a nonrecurring grant. Without that funding, the Mobile Pantry will return to making only 20 deliveries in the 2008-09 year.
“It’s a reality we’re faced with,” said Matthew Bourlakas, chief operating officer of the Food Bank. “We’ve been trying to find other sources of revenue, but right now, we’ve scaled back to do only 20 more of these pantries.”
According to Bourlakas, the pantries generally carry about 10,000 pounds of food, all items a family might buy at the grocery store. One Mobile Pantry trip serves 300 households.
“A box of food doesn’t seem like much, but that box of food each month for a family really helps them make it through,” Garrett said.
“We’re really struggling to get food into the rural counties where people really need it,” Bourlakas said. “We’re just hopeful we can find a way to keep moving forward.”
The Food Bank is accepting monetary donations to help fund the program. For details on how to help, call 329-3491.
