Jake Browning
reporter@thefranklinpress.com
MANNA Food Bank provided Macon County citizens with more than 75,000 pounds of food over the course of this year, enough for about 63,000 meals.
The driving force behind that titanic total has been the pop-up food bank program, which MANNA began hosting with the help of Macon Program for Progress in June.
The initial pop-up food bank, which brought a truckload of food to MPP for attendees to collect at their leisure, attracted 165 guests, but subsequent monthly events have drawn as many as 520 people in a single afternoon.
MPP family and community outreach coordinator Felicia Roberts said the food often runs out by the end of the day, but whenever something is left, they make a point to pass along the extras to REACH of Macon County, Teen Challenge of the Smokies and other residential non-profit programs.
“Any place that has residents, we invite them to come get whatever we don’t give away sooner,” Roberts said. “We don’t want any leftovers.”
MPP isn’t the only program that’s benefitted from pop-up food banks. Last week, NCWorks hosted their first annual community resource fair with a pop-up food bank as the central attraction. By the end of the day, more than 100 families had collected food. Career center director Paula Alter said the food bank was the primary draw for the fair and that many of Macon County’s citizens in need found sources of transportation, childcare, medical assistance and other critical resources because MANNA got them in the door.
“It made a very large difference in many ways,” Alter said. “Food poverty is a real issue in this county, and their being here made it easier for a lot of people to see resources available to them that they wouldn’t have known about otherwise.”
Kara Irani of MANNA said the food bank is always looking for new organizations to partner with. Entities like the Department of Social Services, the LBJ Job Corps and First United Methodist Church have been reliable sources of volunteers already, but they feel they can do more. Irani said synergy between civic-minded organizations is key to improving access.
“We like to bring food distribution operations to other resource sites,” Irani said. “We aim to create a one-stop shop for people in need.”
For now, however, Irani is thankful to see such a positive response in Macon County and wants to thank the community for making their thriving operations possible.
“We’re reaching people in rural areas like Macon County that we’ve never been able to reach before,” Irani said.
For more information on resources available through MANNA Food Bank and to volunteer, call the food bank at 828-299-3663 or visit their website at mannafoodbank.org.