In the six weeks since the COVID-19 virus pandemic hit America, more than 30-million people have lost their jobs and filed for unemployment benefits. Looking at it another way, that’s a little over 1-in-6 workers impacted – only a few percentage points away from the staggering jobless numbers that took place during the Great Depression.
Please consider supporting your local food bank or church outreach.
Along with loss of income, comes a need to adjust the family spending. How to pay a mortgage or rent, buy food, and target bills must be figured out. For some, food immediately becomes a major concern. The modern-day term for it is “food insecurity.”
“The importance of food and the power it has to nourish, to really give love, and the power of a meal, it transforms people..." - Eric Cooper CEO San Antonio Food Bank
Elaine Waxman, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute, a think tank based in Washington, D.C., defines food insecurity as both uncertainty about being able to buy food when you run out, and having to cut back on the size of meals, or in the most severe cases, actually skipping a whole day's worth of food.
While many of us have been inconvenienced or troubled by the inability to buy sufficient toilet paper or tissues, that’s nowhere near comparable to not having healthy food available.
Around the country, some churches are offering food for free. Convoy of Hope, working hand-in-hand with churches, has distributed millions of meals. And food banks are being hit hard by new clients, including some who have never ventured near a food bank before. States like New York and California are attempting to team-up farmers, who have available food and milk due to closed restaurants, with food banks that are in great need. Pairing up ‘locally grown’ with ‘locally needed.’
Feeding America, which coordinates a national network of food banks, says demand for food has doubled, event tripled in some communities. One slogan the group uses is, “No one can thrive on an empty stomach.”
In this report, we take you to Texas, where the San Antonio Food Bank, like other food banks across America, is making a tremendous difference in the lives of thousands of people in a 16-county region. To give you an idea of the need, this food bank held a special event – a “pop up distribution” at Traders Village, a 100-acre marketplace/swap-meet near Lackland Air Force Base, with plenty of parking. The food bank was well-prepared for 6,000 families to drive up… instead they saw 10,000!
Eric Cooper is CEO of the San Antonio Food Bank. In our podcast below, he explains, “In this time of such unprecedented demand, we’ve been struggling to keep up with supply.” Cooper tells us what happened back on April 9th at Traders Village. “Holy Week was a time where we knew we could not say ‘no.’ We needed to make sure that we had enough food to feed the families, and we had 6,000 households pre-registered to receive food.”
As the food bank team arrived at 3:00 a.m. to get things set up for the event, they found carloads of people were already there, waiting for food! “And as we got ready and started the distribution on time, the line (of cars) just kept going and going. 4,000 additional households showed up and “we were just so blessed to have the food supply and the volunteers to be able to meet that need.” It reminded Cooper of times when Jesus was able to feed thousands.
Cooper strongly believes “the importance of food and the power it has to nourish, to really give love, and the power of a meal, it transforms people and it nourishes people and the food bank is privileged to be part of that coming together and that’s what happened that week.” But the need continues every day since then and may be growing as the economy wobbles.
The example we tell you about here in San Antonio is taking place across the country as food banks ramp-up to serve the newly-unemployed as well as those who often rely on the food banks for vital sustenance. Please consider supporting your local food bank or church outreach.
Here’s our interview with Eric Cooper, with K-LOVE’s Felipe Aguilar, where you can learn more:
Below: Beatrice Diaz wears a protective face mask as she passes out pet food at a drive-thru pet food bank held by the Miami-Dade County Animal Services Department at the Pet Adoption and Protection Center, during the new coronavirus pandemic.
