People lined up in the parking lot at the Xenia Community Center for The Foodbank, Inc.’s walk-up farmer’s market on Thursday.
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For an hour, people went down the line picking out items like bread, fruit, desserts, and canned food.
Lee Lauren Truesdale, The Foodbank Inc.’s Chief Development Officer, said Thanksgiving is their “go time.”
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“Christmas is important as well, just the holiday season as a whole, but usually that Thanksgiving season is very busy for us,” Truesdale said.
She told News Center 7 that it’s because, on top of everyday expenses, families are preparing for the holidays like buying Christmas gifts.
“You’ve got just a lot kind of coming at families at one time,” Truesdale said. “High cooling or high heating bills, a number of different things that will impact a family’s food budget at the end of the day.”
She said 118,000 people locally report that they struggle to put food on their table. The Foodbank’s main goal is to distribute 16 to 18 million pounds of food to a network of 110 nonprofit food pantries.
They hand it out in many ways, like the walk-up farmer’s market or through mass food distribution drive-thru events that see hundreds of cars pull through. That work takes a lot of manpower.
“As the colder months set in and as temperatures drop, we really see a decline in volunteers off-site at our distributions because some of those sites are outdoors and so folks aren’t willing to work outside,” Truesdale said. “And I get it, we understand it, but hunger doesn’t take a break.”
Truesdale said right now they are in need of volunteers to show up and help pass out food.
“We have folks who are really committed to this work, who’ve been here for some time. We are a part of this community, and we love to support this community as well,” she said.
Information about signing up to volunteer can be found here.
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