On May 1, the Atlanta Community Food Bank (ACFB) held a ribbon cutting ceremony for their new community food center location in Jonesboro, which aims to increase access to fresh food in the area.
ACFB serves 29 counties across Metro Atlanta and North Georgia. Jonesboro, located in Clayton County, has a median household income of $33,000 a year; the county itself has over a 70 percent African American population and one of the highest rates of food insecurity in the Metro Atlanta area, and is a predominantly African American community.
The ACFB works with nearly 700 community based nonprofits across those 29 counties, getting the food to these local organizations so they can distribute it to the people in their communities. The community food centers are an extension of that work, said Kyle Waide, President and CEO of the Atlanta Community Food Bank for nearly a decade.
“What we’ve realized over the past several years is that there are certain parts of our region that have high levels of need, where we don’t have the capacity to meet that need,” Waide said. “So we’ve started opening community food centers that we operate directly. And in operating it, it helps us fill a gap in a region where there’s a lot of need, but not enough capacity to meet that need.”
The Jonesboro location is the third of the community food centers in the Metro Atlanta area. The two others are in Marietta and Stone Mountain.
The food bank is known for stretching a dollar as much as possible by leveraging those partnerships with other organizations to ensure they are providing as much food to families as possible.
“The food bank works really hard to be as efficient as possible. Folks need lots of help right now, and resources are limited, so the more we can do to operate efficiently, it means we can maximize the amount of food and support that we get out into the community,” said Waide.
It’s not enough to simply connect people with food, either, said Waide. Many people facing food insecurity — typically people who are struggling financially — are also more likely to suffer from a number of health effects, some related to food and nutrition. Moreover, access to this food is not always easy, and healthier options can be more expensive.
“We’ve worked over time, as we have grown [in size], to really diversify our inventory and ensure it consists of a high percentage of really healthy items,” Waide said.
More than 60 percent of food distributed by the food bank today is either fresh or frozen, as opposed to being boxed or canned. Additionally, the food bank’s largest product category is fresh produce, accounting for nearly 30 percent of what the food bank will distribute this year — equivalent to 35 million pounds — Waide added.
Internally, the food bank uses a standard they call “foods to encourage”, which are “foods that are more likely to be healthier in nature” that around 80 percent of the food they are distributing are on the healthier side.
After almost a decade leading the ACFB, Waide has personally seen the ways in which the food bank has helped people stay resilient and change their lives. He recounted one particular story of success about a young woman facing economic challenges who came to one of the partner distributors in DeKalb County on a regular basis as she tried to find a higher paying job and get out of debt.
“Access to that food on a regular basis really gave her more access to resources,” said Waide, adding that the food bank alleviated a financial burden.“One day, she called our partner and left this beautiful voicemail about how she didn’t need to come that week, and wouldn’t need to come again because she finally got to a place where she had enough resources to provide everything on her own for her family.”
The lady was most happy that she could open up more resources for someone else, said Waide, which perfectly captures the spirit of the people being aided by the food bank.
“People who are striving and working hard to get on their feet and get back to a place of stability, and as they make progress they want to help others who are on a similar journey,” Waide said.
It’s this energy that can energize the work being done at the food bank, Waide said. The Jonesboro site looks to carry on this same spirit and serve the surrounding community to the fullest capacity.
