Page 126 - South Mississippi Living - December, 2019

GivingBACK ghting hunger
Feeding the Gulf Coast
story and photos courtesy of
Feeding the Gulf Coast
Sarah is in the third grade. One Friday morning, she starts to feel ill, so her teacher sends her to the nurse. Sarah begins to cry, scared that if she goes home early she will not get food in her backpack, and she knows she doesn’t have food at home for the weekend.
One in four children in
South Mississippi regularly experiences hunger. They
may qualify for free lunch
at school, but on the
weekends, they would not
have enough to eat if not
for Feeding the Gulf Coast’s Backpack Program. This program provides nutritious weekend meals for children that they can easily prepare themselves.
Feeding the Gulf Coast hears stories like Sarah’s every day throughout the Gulf Coast, where one in six individuals is food insecure. These people are seniors living on fixed incomes, children without healthy food to eat outside of school and working families struggling to make ends meet.
Feeding the Gulf Coast, formerly Bay Area Food Bank, serves a 24-county area spanning South Mississippi, South Alabama, and the Florida panhandle. We have been fighting hunger in South Mississippi since 1990, and we strive for a hunger-free Gulf Coast.
In 2016, Feeding the Gulf Coast purchased a facility in Gulfport. We are working to expand this facility to include a production kitchen
for children’s meals, storage
space for fresh produce, volunteer areas for packing backpacks,
and classroom space for offering nutrition education lessons.
These facility enhancements will strengthen people who truly need help, including struggling families, children and seniors, so they have the energy to reach for a better day.
Last year in Mississippi, with our more than 70 partner agencies, we distributed over 1.5 million meals to an estimated 3,600 individuals monthly and served nearly 9,000 children through our Child Nutrition Programs. However, more work needs to be done to solve hunger in South Mississippi, and we need your help.
We hope you will join us in the local fight against hunger. For more information about how
you can help solve hunger in our community, please visit www. feedingthegulfcoast.org.
Feeding the Gulf Coast | 1501 34th St., Gulfport | 228.896.6979 | www.feedingthegulfcoast.org
126 SOUTH MISSISSIPPI Living • December 2019 FOR MORE REFLECTIONS OF THE GULF COAST >> www.smliving.net