‘You are not alone': How the Akron-Canton Foodbank is tackling food insecurity during COVID-19

Village Minds was started by Natia Simone as a Facebook page to connect people in need of food and assistance, due to COVID-19 and grocery store closures after the protests following the murder of George Floyd. However, a broader issue of food insecurity led her to expand into a formal organization that has made more than 3,650 grocery deliveries. A partnership with a local produce store helps fill bags with fresh food and a food pantry provides other staples. With the help of friends and family, Simone uses a rented U-Haul to deliver the groceries to seniors throughout Chicago.

Food Connect is a nonprofit that acts as a middleman between businesses with edible food waste and people battling food insecurity. From donations to delivery, the whole process is streamlined through an app.

The Farmers to Family program, an initiative from the U.S Department of Agriculture set aside $3 billion for its Farmers to Families Food Box program, part of the Coronavirus Food Assistance Program. The program awarded contracts farmers and distributors to provide food for families experiencing food insecurity. The article lays out some of the challenges with the program like issues with how the contracts were awarded, difficulty coordinating between distributors and farmers, stringent requirements, as well as the quick, creative solutions that were deployed to overcome them.

Organizations across the country are working to address food insecurity among Asian Americans, an issue that was exacerbated by COVID-19 related job losses. Groups such as VietAid in Boston and the Southeast Asian Mutual Assistance Associations Coalition in Philadelphia provide free groceries, hot meals, and other assistance to those in need. The local organizations are also a source of assistance for people who do not have documentation and they provide services and help navigating local bureaucracies in many languages and dialects, which can be a barrier for some within Asian American communities.

The Madison Metropolitan School District created a food delivery program so students could access meals during the pandemic when teaching became virtual. When they noticed only 15,000 meals were being delivered, a low number, they created changes to their meal distribution program. The district collaborated with Badger buses to deliver the school lunches, then at specific stops school officials would distribute the meals to students. After the changes, 50,000 meals were delivered.

Mutual aid groups in New Mexico are packing and delivering groceries and other staples to New Mexicans in need during the pandemic who have not been adequately served by existing social safety nets. Groups like Albuquerque Mutual Aid, McKinley Mutual Aid, and Santa Fe Mutual Aid Network accept cash donations and donated goods. Volunteers then distribute the goods to people whose immigration status, health risks, or lack of transportation block them from receiving traditional government aid. The groups are planning to coordinate their work to be more efficient so they can continue after the immediate crisis.

A school district in Oregon took a multi-pronged approach to serving students their school lunches during the pandemic. Some of those things include curbside pickup, using buses to deliver food, and packing more than one meal per pickup. “We definitely saw a decline in the number of people we were able to serve, or who were coming out for meals, so we’re really trying to reach everyone to come get a meal.”

Alimentando el Pueblo (Feeding el Pueblo) is a pop-up food bank, started in response to Covid-19, that offers food staples for Latinx dishes. A Mexican, Central American, and Caribbean food box option, with 12 lbs. of fresh food, is filled with food from local farmers and markets, and funded by a GoFundMe account. Families can get a box every two weeks and the food bank has given food to 198 families, or about 936 people. The culturally relevant food has been an important source of comfort and support for many community members, particularly people who are prohibited from accessing federal assistance.

When the coronavirus threatened the economic well-being and health of the immigrant farmworkers in Florida's agricultural hub in Collier County, faith-based organizations that could no longer serve free hot meals pivoted to a weekly distribution of donated food and homemade masks. Immokalee's Mision Peniel and area churches served an average of 400 people per week since the early days of the outbreak, focusing on financially struggling families, with bags of vegetables, meat, and other staples.

More than a dozen states are participating in a SNAP program, allowing people experiencing economic hardship to purchase food online from retailers. While only certain online retailers allow for food stamp purchases and SNAP users can’t pay for delivery fees with their benefits, more states are piloting the program, which could prove useful for people quarantining from the novel coronavirus.