Children and families all over the US are facing growing difficulties accessing the resources they need to survive as the need for food assistance continues to surpass pre-pandemic levels. According to our data, one in seven children will go to bed hungry tonight. In Atlanta, we’ve unfortunately seen these statistics come to life.
In 1979, we founded the Atlanta Community Food Bank to address food insecurity plaguing our community. We estimate more than 715,000 people in our service area are currently food insecure, with 221,000 of those individuals being children. Hunger is a leading risk to the health of our Georgia families and as an organization, we are working to provide the resources these children and families need.
The Atlanta Community Food Bank collects and distributes food and goods from across the region and helps to manage the logistics of distributing the food among those who need it, including children, families and seniors. We host food and fund drives, as well as hunger education workshops for children and adults to showcase how prevalent of a problem food insecurity is and to get more people involved.
Every year, we distribute more than 77 million meals and more than 21 million pounds of fresh produce to our neighbors in need. We also send 5,000 food boxes per month with nutritious food out to seniors who are struggling financially. Our benefits outreach team works with low-income individuals and families and provides them with the resources they need to gain access to federal and state nutrition assistance programs, such as SNAP.
We’re proud to work with 700 partner agencies across the state serving 29 north Georgia counties to distribute food to those in need. In 2021, our food drive collected 8,433 pounds of food. Over the past three years, the food drive has raised $143,580 in monetary donations.
Our efforts are bolstered by the generosity of the Insurance Industry Charitable Foundation (IICF). IICF and its insurance industry supporters lead a number of important initiatives for the Atlanta Community Food Bank, including their Fill the Truck program which gathers food for our community. Additionally, they host several other food drives and provide valuable grant funding, which allow us to host our events and educate our community about food insecurity. Just last year, the IICF Georgia Chapter awarded us with $102,100 in grant funding to kickoff 2021, providing nearly 500,000 nutritious meals to those in need.
This year, during the IICF Week of Giving in October, we’ll be hosting two major events. At our Hunger Action Center, volunteers from the insurance industry and beyond will gather to assist with projects throughout the site, including sorting and packing recently donated food, repackaging produce or grains for families or boxing non-perishable items for seniors. At our Community Food Center, volunteers will package and distribute food to the Stone Mountain community, a local area struck particularly hard by food insecurity. They will coordinate vehicles, load food boxes and assist with packaging non-perishables and bags of produce.
The Insurance Industry Charitable Foundation, with its generous contributions to the Food Bank, is helping to provide urgently needed food and nutrition to families and children across north Georgia. We are grateful for IICF’s attention to this national crisis and its commitment to help solve hunger. Through donated funds, the Fill the Truck food drive and volunteering in our Hunger Action Center, IICF is making a difference for struggling families and helping to build a stronger community. We hope you’ll join us this Week of Giving as we collect major food and resources through our two events for our community. To learn more, please visit: https://www.acfb.org/
