Helping alleviate the need
Food Insecurity, Part 3 of 3
“Second Harvest would like to thank Stand Out for Good Inc. for supporting this holiday food distribution and PYA Waltman Capital for its continued assistance as well,” said Marvin Figgins with Second Harvest.
Another organization reaching out to help is United Way of Greater Knoxville, which is proceeding with the distribution of $200,000 for food distribution and assistance services.
Wednesday, “Nov. 12, Knoxville City Council unanimously approved Mayor Indya Kincannon’s emergency ordinance to help support food assistance programs in the Knoxville area, allocating $100,000 from the city’s unassigned fund balance to address critical food shortages in Knoxville,” a press release stated. “In turn, UWGK agreed to match funds, resulting in a total of $200,000 to support food assistance services.
Currently, “Second Harvest distributes about 436,000 meals a week across East
Tennessee,” Second Harvest senior marketing and creative strategist Jon Rice said. In fiscal year 2025, “we distributed more than 27 million pounds of food (or
22.7 million meals) through our 18-county service area. That works out to about 1.9 million meals per month, or 436,538 per week.
“Each month we serve on the order of 195,000 people on average,” he said. “These meals are delivered via partner food
pantries, mobile drive-thru distributions, area schools, senior-serving programs and nutrition classes.
“Our goal is to keep an ample supply of food in our warehouse for our pantry partners and food distribution programs year-round, but spikes in need sometimes strain our inventory,” Rice said. “For example, we activated a contingency plan to deal with sharply rising demand due to the government shutdown.
“With the support of our community, we were able to add extra shelf-stable food to our holiday meal boxes, send additional staples to area food pantries and create emergency food boxes for families who stopped by our Maryville facility in need of groceries,” he said.
“Outside of school hours, Second Harvest provides extra support. For example, our Food for Kids backpack program sends home extra meals on weekends during the school term to more than 15,000 students every week.
“We continue offering the program during the summer months to participating schools, and are looking to add new schools when we can, at no cost to the family or the school,” Rice said.
Stone pointed out there is a large number of pantries in Knox County.
“I believe Second Harvest has over 100 partner panties and several more that are not affiliated with Shepherd of Hope,” she added.
“Note that this year, we have made several food donations to pantries located in the downtown area as they have struggled to keep their shelves stocked,” she said. “We accept prayer requests and approximately 80 percent of our guests will ask for prayers for: medical issues, housing affordability, homelessness, disabilities, job losses and family disputes.”
