Food insecurity more than doubled in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis, according to one estimate from researchers at Northwestern University. An NPR article published in September stated that nearly 1 in 4 households experienced food insecurity this year.
More than 10,000 Athens residents are feeling this strain, but a local initiative is working to address the issue. Athens Eats Together is a county-wide initiative that is providing meals to community members affected by food insecurity caused by the pandemic.
Why It’s Newsworthy: Athens Eats Together was created by the Athens Community Council on Aging to provide emergency food relief to any Clarke County resident, regardless of age, facing food insecurity during the pandemic.
Amy Lancaster, the Director of Development and Communications at ACCA, has been involved with the organization since the pandemic began, and she has seen the program adapt and respond to increased food insecurity in the community.
“Basically, we took our model that we had been doing with Meals on Wheels for our senior citizens, and we've opened that up to the entire community,” Lancaster said. “So regardless of age, we are able to give food to people that are in need because of COVID-19.”
The intiative is focused on safely distributing healthy food to populations in need, including residents experiencing homelessness. With federal funding from the CARES Act distributed to ACCA through the Clarke County government, the Athens Eats Initiative is able to buy fresh produce from Collective Harvest and the Athens Farmers Market, both locally sourced farming collaboratives.
In addition to fresh produce, the program is supplying shelf-stable foods like rice, pasta and canned goods, as well as vouchers for the farmers market so residents can select their own produce and proteins.
“We're giving them meals ready to eat… we're trying to cast the net out to serve as many people as we can in the community,” Lancaster said.
On Saturday, Nov. 21, masked volunteers from ACCA were staggered across the parking lot of Chapelwood United Methodist Church in Athens, Georgia. The converted lot has become a drive-thru for community food distribution during the pandemic. Some volunteers at the front entrance directed traffic, while others loaded pre-packaged groceries into cars.
Ewan Cobran was one of the volunteers helping to load food. An assistant professor at the University of Georgia College of Pharmacy, Cobran feels that seniors are an overlooked, hidden population in the pandemic. He began volunteering to help provide essential goods to the community while also making seniors feel less alone.
While volunteering, Cobran also noticed that the effects of the pandemic on food insecurity have been felt community-wide, especially on families.
“So one of the things that I realized, too, is that regardless of demographics and social economics, people need to eat,” Cobran said.
Currently, the ACCA alone is serving approximately 2,000 senior citizens through COVID-19 relief. As the initiative has begun to incorporate families through the school system, the supply at distribution sites has increased to meet the new demand.
Staff and volunteers have organized distributions at three local schools: Hilsman Middle School, Clarke Middle School and Whitehead Road Elementary. The distribution happens daily from 11 a.m. to 12 p.m. In addition to these distribution sites, volunteers are also making contactless deliveries.
“So on average, we have 150 Clarke County residents that pick up food from the ACCA campus every day. We also have 13 neighborhood zones where we have volunteers that actually come and pick up bags of groceries from us and then they distribute it out into 13 different zones and the community,” Lancaster said.
As food supply chains across the country have broken down in the wake of COVID-19, organizations like ACCA have struggled to meet the demand for staples like eggs, milk and toilet paper. Lancaster admits that they have had to get creative in order to meet community needs.
“We have a staff person that does nothing but sit there and order food and kind of work the systems to try to get the best food in a bag, to make it nutritious and sustainable for a family or a person,” Lancaster said. “So it just kind of depends on what the shortage is at any given time.”
In addition to dealing with an inconsistent supply chain, the organization has had to train more volunteers to meet community demand. According to Lancaster, the Athens Eats Together initiative quickly grew outside of the organization’s scope, so bringing on more trained volunteers became a necessity. New volunteers, who are mostly UGA students and retirees in the community, go through training to learn pandemic protocol before they begin.
According to the ACCA website, it’s estimated that the Athens Eats Together initiative will provide over 690,000 meals to 10,000 residents. Lancaster admits this would not be feasible without such robust community collaboration from organizations like the Food Bank of Northeast Georgia, Collective Harvest and Athens Farmers Market.
“We definitely have partnered with great people across the county in order to get things done... so don't try to do everything on your own, but just really network and pool your resources together,” Lancaster said.
Even though the COVID-19 pandemic has shifted the organization's operations, they are focused on emergency food relief. Despite limitations like funding shortages resulting from shutting down many programs, Lancaster says the organization is actively fundraising to sustain their programming through COVID-19.
Athens Eats Together will be providing services through the end of January, but the future of the program depends on more federal funding through the CARES Act, which is not guaranteed to be renewed at the beginning of the year.
“I think that we're gonna reassess where we're at as a community at the end of January and see where that goes,” Lancaster said.