Mobile Food Distribution

MOBILE FOOD DISTRIBUTION

According to Jill Waity, assistant professor of Sociology at UNCW and Treasurer and Secretary of Feast Down East, food insecurity reflects a person’s lack of access to enough food to maintain an active, healthy life, or as a household’s need to make trade-offs between important basic needs. That would include needing to choose between paying rent or buying nutritionally adequate foods.

Abundant Giving has an outreach process to help those in need that are located in the under-served areas of our communities. Our process is simple. Once the foods are made available to us, we identify the areas and neighborhoods in the communities, by utilizing the knowledge gained through local grassroots community groups, local government resources, and the network of food bank agencies that currently serve the community. Then we take the food to them.

Example: We currently use vans, suv's, open bed trucks, trailers, rented box trucks and tractor trailers courtesy of our volunteers, to transport the food. We identify a needy area, choose a central location within the area, communicate our intent of food distribution to the area's residents, setup for distribution and distribute the food and supplies.

The Abundant Giving Mobile Distribution program focuses on the distribution of fresh fruits and vegetables.

Once the location, date, and time of distribution is set, the appropriate sized vehicle will transport the food and setup for distribution. Items will be handed out directly from the vehicle or tables and pallets will be setup to contain the different items for distribution in a self serve environment.

The USDA defines food deserts as census tracts, also known as neighborhoods, that are both low-income and have low-access to grocery stores or supermarkets.

The existence of similar areas are found throughout our four county area.

FOOD INSECURITY

WHAT IS A

FOOD DESERT?