HUDSON VALLEY – With food insecurity gaining a spotlight nationwide because of the COVID-19 pandemic, local efforts are being held throughout the Hudson Valley to combat the issue in the local community.
Carol Griffin, the food industry relations coordinator for the Food Bank of the Hudson Valley, which serves six counties, shared some of the struggles in securing donations from foodservice providers for needy families.
“We’ve seen a lot of our normal donors who couldn’t donate to us anymore because they ran out of food,” she said. “We didn’t know what we were doing and how much we were getting from which sources in the very beginning.”
Griffin estimates that the need for food donations is over 50 percent higher than it was last year. She states that the largest amount of requests came from residents in Orange County. The second-largest amount came from Dutchess County, per Griffin. That is where grassroots movements have emerged to provide food to families directly.
Vassar College economics professor David Kennett and Dr. Seema Rizvi of Wingate at Dutchess organized separate food delivery efforts this summer, and plan on continuing to host food drives if the problem of food insecurity shows no signs of slowing down.
Dr. Rizvi collaborated with members of her community initiative All for One for a drive-thru food pantry held outside of the Poughkeepsie Galleria in May. They are planning to host another in the City of Poughkeepsie soon.
“We were able to raise around $60,000, which is a generous contribution for all from all the community, and tremendous support,” she said. “This was a great success.”
It was a virtual cocktail party that inspired Kennett and his friends to bring goodwill to struggling families. Kennett and his friends from Vassar were enjoying libations on Zoom when the idea came up about bringing goodwill to the locals.
They decided to collaborate with local restaurants through a partnership with Dutchess Outreach’s Lunch Box program to bring food to struggling residents. Their group is known as the Concerned Neighbors committee.
“It actually spread like wildfire,” he said. “We just put the word out to people who put the word out to other people and people thought it was a good idea.”
Kennett and others partnered with restaurants in the City of Poughkeepsie, which were already facing hard times themselves having to close to the public at the height of the pandemic. Around 130 meals were delivered during each of the seven days that the group held food drives.
“Most of them were really happy to do it,” he said. “It was business to them, which has been slack as well.”
In addition to warm lunches and dinners, the Concerned Neighbors committee also secured homemade baked goods, which were delivered to Hillcrest House and Grace Smith House.
Estimates from Feeding America suggest that food insecurity is projected to affect 54 million Americans due to the COVID-19 pandemic, up from 37 million before the pandemic. Meanwhile, in the nation’s capital, negotiations on a federal stimulus bill that could potentially alleviate the concerns of families struggling to put food on the table, ended in a stalemate earlier this month.
