ELYRIA, Ohio — The Second Harvest Food Bank works around the clock to keep families fed and full. President and CEO Julie Chase-Morefield said the need seen during the pandemic still hasn’t tapered off.
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“At the height, we were seeing serving 45,000 families in one month, but we are near 20-25,000 families a month, and now we are looking at 30,000 families/households served a month, and that’s huge, those are huge numbers,” said Morefield.
Many of the families in need have kids in the Elyria City School District. The district has continued its monthly food drives at Ely Stadium for the last three years.
We were there for the first one in April of 2020. Nearly four years later, News 5 is following through, and learning the need is still great. Superintendent Ann Schloss said the district was serving one thousand families at the height of the pandemic. The numbers declined slightly, but now she said they're creeping up again to nearly 500 families served a month.
“It’s always a hard time in the winter I think some of the jobs some of our parents have are seasonal and we know that so we want them to come out and let us help,” Schloss said.
With inflation, Chase-Morefield said donations to the food bank aren’t what they used to be.
“The reality is when you don’t have more food you end up serving less and that’s one of the things, we think we may be seeing is that if the food boxes don’t have as much as they did one year ago two years ago,” said Chase-Morefield. “Those families are coming back more often to get help.”
Chase-Morefield adds that during the last food drive at Ely Stadium, they had to turn away 100 cars.
“It’s hard for staff, it’s hard for the volunteers because you want to make sure everyone gets the food that they need,” said Chase-Morefield. Second Harvest said monetary donations help them meet demands fastest.
“When you’re coming out of a recession and coming out of down periods you normally see a recovery and we are just not seeing that coming out of the pandemic,” Chase-Morefield added.
The next food distribution for Elyria City School is on Jan. 29 at Ely Stadium.
Click here if you'd like to help donate to Second Harvest Food Bank.
