Hope Will Help Us Through This
Hope Will Help Us Through This James Stockdale, a veteran of the Vietnam War who spent seven years as a prisoner of war, attributed his survival to a simple ideal: “You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end – which you can never afford to lose – with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts [...]
Nourishing the Soul
Nourishing the Soul Since March, the number of people coming to the dozens of Mobile Markets being held each week across the region has not dwindled. In many instances, people begin lining up in their cars or sometimes on foot, patiently waiting, two to three hours before the Mobile Market is slated to start. While the volunteers placed the boxes [...]
Food Insecurity is Real No Matter Where You Live
It doesn’t matter where you live — from suburbia to urban to rural — not knowing when your next meal is coming from (or even having food) is real to tens of millions of people every year in the U.S. And people needing assistance with food has increased since the COVID-19 pandemic derailed the majority of everyday life for most [...]
Mile After Mile, St. Louis Area Foodbank Drivers Keep Delivering
Monday through Friday, between 6 and 7 a.m. the 14-member team of drivers (which quickly jumped to 19 with the onset of COVID-19) for St. Louis Area Foodbank set out on daily routes to deliver or pick up food across 14 counties in Missouri and 12 counties in Illinois. Some of these routes are more than 100 miles in one [...]
Safe Space Commissary Delivers More Than Food
You’ll find Safe Space Commissary in an unassuming looking church (which has a long history) basement in the historic, tightly-knit Ville neighborhood in northwest St. Louis city, next to Sumner High School. When the pandemic hit, Melanie Forbis of Safe Space realized this newly formed after school program, through The Ville Community Development Foundation, needed to evolve. They knew [...]
16 Million Strong and Counting
The heat -- and the humidity -- have settled in across the Midwest. Except for that, it’s a far cry from a typical summer full of outdoor festivals, summer camps, swimming, Cardinals baseball, stay-cations to the top of the Arch, Six Flags, the zoo, and the multitudes of other activities found across St. Louis and the surrounding region. Instead, people [...]
Feeding Hope During a Pandemic
A meal provides hope, but how do you provide hope in the midst of a global pandemic? There is no playbook for something like Covid-19. Suddenly, a number of our employees were working from home. Many days my daughter had to join me in the office. For weeks, it felt like each day brought more questions than answers. Throughout these [...]
Needing Help For The First Time
As families try to remain stable, the Foodbank’s mobile distributions provide food and supplies in their community. Volunteers place items directly in their trunks in a no-contact model to keep everyone safe. Families like Jenny’s try to stay positive while waiting for normalcy to return to their lives. She tries to make sense of it to her two children, ages [...]
Providing Food, Hope, and Stability
March 16, 2020, started with a food distribution in Pine Lawn, Mo. where we distributed more than 25,000 meals for local families. Standing in the parking lot of the Skate King that day, you could feel the tension in the air. The coronavirus was coming to our region. There was already one confirmed case in St. Louis County. It was [...]
Volunteers Are All Heart
One of the main ingredients in the success of St. Louis Area Foodbank and the hundreds of food pantries we work with are the volunteers. We’re not aware of even one food bank or pantry that is able to keep their doors open without the aid of volunteers. In fact, some pantries are all-volunteer led. From the onset of the [...]