Food banks and community kitchens nationwide are experiencing unprecedented demand for services as the coronavirus pandemic and subsequent economic fallout continue. At the Flagstaff Family Food Center, demand for hunger relief assistance is up about 80% with no signs of slowing in the foreseeable future. Carrie Henderson is the Development Director at the Food Center. She spoke with KNAU’s Gillian Ferris about feeding nearly double the usual number of hungry people.
GF: Thank you so much for being willing to talk to me today. I know you’re busy.
CH: Yeah, of course. I appreciate the opportunity to share what we’re doing.
GF: Let’s talk about that. Maybe we need to set the stage a little bit. Tell us a little bit about the Flagstaff Family Food Center pre-pandemic.
CH: The Flagstaff Family Food Center has been in operation for almost 30 years. We originally opened, basically as a soup kitchen on Christmas Day 1991 and have not missed a hot meal service since that day. And we’ve since expanded to a more traditional food bank, as well. So, we have two locations…our kitchen and food bank. At our food bank we distribute family food boxes 5 days a week. We have a number of other hunger relief services that we provide, including mobile distributions at senior housing centers and elementary schools, deliveries to homebound seniors, a sack lunch program, and we also have a reading room at our kitchen where kids can get reading help and tutoring every night of the week. That’s what we were doing pre-COVID…a few of those things have changed a little bit since the pandemic hit.
GF: Yeah, tell us about that. You were already serving so many people with so many different programs.
CH: We are serving more people now than we ever have before. Across our 10 hunger relief programs we’ve seen on average an increase of about 80% since the pandemic started back in mid-March. So, we’re seeing thousands of people coming to our food bank to ask for our services for the first time ever in their lives due to having their hours cut, or jobs lost. People who are already low income or living paycheck to paycheck…just missing a few of those paychecks makes it really hard to rebuild savings account. So, we expect that need to remain high for many, many months if not a year or more to come.
GF: The food center relies heavily on volunteers, especially for the daily food prep. How has that changed?
CH: When the pandemic started back in March, we quickly realized that it was really hard to enforce strict hygiene procedures with a different group of volunteers every single day. It was just putting a lot more stress on staff. So, we’ve had a consistent group of National Guard volunteers helping run our family food box distribution and helping out at our kitchen with that food prep and dinner service every day.
GF: Carrie, how can we as community members help? Do we drop off peanut butter and jelly fixings for the kitchen? How can we help?
CH: Our immediate needs right now are, number one, financial. Like I said, we’ve seen an 80% increase across the board in our hunger relief services, so that obviously comes with a sustained increase in our monthly operational costs. Of course, we’ve had to transition our daily hot meal from a sit-down meal inside our kitchen to a to-go-style, no contact distribution. Since the pandemic started we’ve added five mobile distributions at elementary schools, so that has also come with an increased cost. And then the second program that we’ve really ramped up is our home deliveries. Some of our biggest food needs right now are vegetables. So, if you have a garden, or if you’re at the grocery store and want to pick up a few extra zucchinis, that’s a big need right now. And like you mentioned, peanut butter and jelly is another big need. That program has also increased with kids being home from school longer than normal. We’re also providing meals to the Flagstaff Shelter, 2 meals a day, so food donations are always accepted as well.
GF: Carrie Henderson, thank you so much for your time and for your great work in the community.
CH: Thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to share.
