When the coronavirus pandemic led to officials ordering shutdowns and other issues for businesses and individuals in the spring, local food banks saw demand soar, as families lost employment and schools closed.
Nine months into the crisis, demand at local food banks has not gone down. With the combination of the holiday season and recent spikes in COVID-19 cases in the Verde Valley, local charities say that they need to provide more help than ever.
“We’re running about 750 folks a week coming through the line, still,” said Jeremy Embry, director of Bread of Life in Camp Verde. “Historically, it was about 400 folks per month prior to this. We had some brief lulls, but it never went totally close to normal for us. We’ve had such an increase in demand throughout the year we’ve had to remodel our warehouse. We had to buy two new trucks.”
“We increase some every week through the [pandemic], and the last couple of weeks have been record numbers.” said Michael Newcomb of Manzanita Outreach in Cottonwood. According to Newcomb, there were 675 cars in line for their drive-thru food pickup this past weekend, compared to just 350 on a similar weekend last year. “It could be holiday-related as opposed to the pandemic. We don’t know until we get through Christmas.”
Manzanita provides food on Fridays and Saturdays at the Verde Valley Christian Church, and created a website, MoHelp.org, which gives those who need food a schedule of available services, ways to contribute and a form to fill out to be added to the food giveaway list.
For the most part, nonprofits have been able to keep up with demand. Food is mostly provided through St. Mary’s Food Bank in Phoenix, which provides food for free, so the additional food supply has not yet been an issue for most Verde Valley food banks. Manzanita also joined in a partnership with Farmers to Families through the U.S. Department of Agriculture to distribute locally grown produce.
But even as food banks have been able to match the amount of food needed, the increase in operational capacity has cost more, and they continue to rely on the local community for donations in order to provide food to the needy. With the holiday season approaching, food banks are requesting donations of money in order to maintain operations.
“I do think there are more people who are staying home and protecting themselves who might normally volunteer their time,” said Stacey Hayden of Rising Hope, which gives out food on Tuesdays at Journey Church in Cottonwood. “We have a large number of volunteers who are retirement age. We support them being able to protect themselves but we’re very short-handed.”
Other food banks have switched to a less volunteer- based and more paid-staff model as they have had to deal with changes in how they provide food in order to abide by safety guidelines.
Most of the food banks have switched from a grocery store model where recipients are able to pick out the food they want to a drive-thru model in order to avoid spreading the virus. This has required new training from staff — and additional costs.
“This is what you do, these are the safeguards that are in place,” Embry said. “We follow those guidelines pretty much to a T. We’ve been very, very blessed.”
Nonprofit leaders thanked the community for the support they have seen and said that most of the community has stepped up. However, with demand for food so high, any additional charity from the community is especially appreciated.
“It’s been such a chaotic and wild and yet wonderful time that we’ve gone through,” Hayden said. “Just to see the outpouring of people helping other people in a number of ways has been wonderful. In a way, what we do is just such a blessing. I’m just grateful to be part of it and I encourage people to give what they can.”
