by SARAH THOMACK
St. Joseph Post
When Second Harvest Community Food Bank learned it would no longer be receiving federal funding that affected its senior box program, they decided to continue the program internally.
According to Second Harvest, the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services notified them it would not be renewing a contract for the USDA Commodity Supplemental Food Program (CSFP) that affected funding for their senior box program.
Second Harvest Communications Coordinator Blake Haynes says conducting the program in-house means funding will have to come internally, but it will allow them some flexibility.
“It’s going to allow us to adjust our caseload a little more than what we were able to in the past, for example, we won’t say, every month we know that we’re going to serve exactly a thousand seniors, that’s how it’s going to be for the entire year and that kind of thing, it allows us to adjust that number as needed,” Haynes tells St. Joseph Post. “So if we have 1,039, we’re not having a long waiting list to be able to provide services to those who are in need within our counties, so it really gives us more flexibility and a little bit more variety of some of the products we can provide for those in need.”
Haynes says, due to the pandemic, they have seen needs increase for every age group.
“Especially, you’re seeing more seniors attend our Fresh Mobile Pantry distributions, you’re seeing more seniors... in need and really relying on some of these supplemental programs that we provide," Haynes says. "So bringing this senior box program internal is just going to allow us to assist a lot of seniors and do a lot of good in our community for that demographic and that age group.”
Second Harvest is also continuing to work with school districts with the Backpack Buddies program for students learning in-person and virtually.
“It is a little different this year with some of those kids that are doing the remote schooling versus the in-person, but overall, it’s running as normal as possible, we’re making sure to get those meals and snacks to the school districts and they’re distributing them pretty much normally.”
Haynes says moving forward, another hurdle the food bank faces is no more Coronavirus Food Assistance Program funding. Haynes says that will reduce the amount of pop-up mobiles the food bank will be able to do.
"Due to product availability, we’re not able to schedule all the extra pop-up mobiles as needed within the counties that data tells us we need to be in," Haynes says. "So we’re trying to evaluate how we’re going to address some of that and we do have a couple open days at the end of the month… so we’re going to evaluate and see what we can do those days but it’s really going to depend on product availability and what we can distribute at that time."
For more information on Second Harvest’s programs, visit shcfb dot org.