Hello again!
I’ve recently had the pleasure of meeting with the Director of Philanthropy at Second Harvest Food Bank of Central Florida, Dan Samuels. Through this meeting, I learned about how the bank receives and maintains funding, where the food goes, and all those that the bank is able to feed. Through our conversation, I also learned of how the COVID-19 pandemic negatively impacted Central Floridians in a multitude of ways.
Mr. Samuels tells me that COVID-19 was catastrophic on the level of the Great Recession where the bank is still seeing the impacts to this day, many individuals who only used the bank following the pandemic have never left and gotten back on their feet. Prior to the pandemic, the bank produced around 150,000 meals a day, but following the pandemic, that number has gone up to 300,000 and has never gone back down since. Although the pandemic is now deemed over from the imminent health threat of the disease itself, communities never truly recovered and it’s estimated that around 60% of the individuals using the bank are living paycheck to paycheck, in Central Florida alone.
Hope for the community is given through Second Harvest. Monetary support and funding has tripled since the pandemic and need is being met through the generous donations, fundraising and government subsidy programs to help feed Central Florida.
These are just some of the things i’ve learned through my time volunteering at Second Harvest and I have a lot more information from my interviews with the Volunteer Coordinator and Director of Philanthropy here at the bank and with my time volunteering in the warehouse every week, so my capstone project will have to do with the lines of the impact the food bank has had alone on alleviating hunger in Central Florida, and perhaps more specifically the impact it has had on aiding those who suffer as a result of the pandemic.
-Manal
HSF House Blogs 