The coronavirus pandemic made 2020 a devastating year for the American economy. As jobs were lost and bills piled up, millions of Americans found themselves without the resources they need to get by.
Macon County has fared better than most places, but in a county already ranked as a food-insecure community, the threat of going hungry was a frightening reality for some residents. Fortunately, there’s been no shortage of places for them to seek help.
MANNA Food Bank’s latest county impact report for Macon County cuts off on June 30, 2020, but even the first few months of the pandemic were brutal enough to leave a mark on the report. The food bank distributed 986,220 pounds of food in Macon County alone during the 2019-20 fiscal year, a 38.1 percent increase from the previous year.
Hundreds of residents have grown accustomed to MANNA’s monthly drive-thru pop-up food banks set up with help from Macon Program for Progress.
MANNA agency relations manager Amy Sims said it was important to get more food to the county before it became as critical as it did because of the county’s food insecurity rates. The report projects that 20.5 percent of Macon County residents became food insecure once the pandemic was in full effect, including 33.6 percent of children.
“MANNA is very good at being proactive,” Sims said. “There were a few supply chain interruptions in the beginning, but we’ve gone from that to running out of room for donations and having to rent more warehouse space, which is a good problem to have.”
CareNet remains at the heart of Macon County’s effort to address food insecurity, and 2020 saw unprecedented demand. In 2019, CareNet gave out 305,491 pounds of food to 5,349 households and 9,239 individuals. In 2020, those numbers shot up
to 512,586 pounds of food to 8,039 households and 15,474 people.
CareNet director Tim Hogsed said this outpouring of resources was made possible by unprecedented generosity from community members, churches, businesses and civic organizations.
“We had a lot of people at the start of COVID-19 who stepped up and we were able to help people in a very fast and efficient way,” Hogsed said. “Whether it was large or small, everything helped.”
MANNA and CareNet aren’t the only organization that has seen generous donations during the crisis. Food pantries all over Macon County have kept going strong for the past year. Little free pantries have sprung up in more than a dozen spots around the county, often near the little free libraries that they share a distribution model with, so that those in need can anonymously pick up food at their convenience.
Churches have also played an active role in addressing food insecurity with their own pantries. Second Mile Ministry at Holly Springs Baptist Church, for example, provides the elderly, veterans and families with small children with food, new clothes, gasoline and even help with bills, although they have lost a few weeks of meetings to the pandemic.
“We try to be there for them,” said Pat Thomas with Second Mile Ministry. “I even find that a lot of the time, people just want to be heard. They want someone to ask what’s going on with them.”
For more information on services provided by CareNet or to make a donation, visit the office at 130 Bidwell Street, call 828-369-2642 or go online to www.maconcarenet.org. For the time and location of MANNA Food Bank’s next pop-up food bank, call Felicia Roberts at Macon Program for Progress at 828-524-4471 ext. 406.
Here are locations for some of
the little free food pantries:
• Chamber of Commerce, 98 Hyatt Road
• Ace Hardware, 75 W. Palmer Street
• Asbury United Methodist Church,
81 Firehouse Road, Otto
• Louisa Chapel United Methodist Church,
407 Louisa Chapel Road
• Franklin First Assembly, 1150 E. Main Street
• Bethel United Methodist Church,
81 Bethel Church Road
• Cowee School Arts and Heritage Center,
51 Cowee School Drive