CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — At the end of a long day of work or school, your rumbling stomach might be reminding you that it’s time to eat. Unfortunately for some people facing food insecurity, that rumbling stomach is a constant, and that can be frightening.
The Coastal Bend Food Bank is hoping to lower the number of food-insecure people in the Coastal Bend.
“We keep hoping we’re going to wake up one of these days and we’ll have hunger wiped out," James Burnett, their operations manager said. "It seems like we can never get there but we always have the desire to help somebody.”
So far in 2021, the Coastal Bend Food Bank has served over 9 million meals to 2 million people.
However, since the pandemic slowed down the supply chain, it’s been harder to keep up with that demand.
Food shortages for products such as poultry and produce, cancellations on food orders, and a 10 percent decrease in food donations by the USDA has been challenging to the local food bank throughout the year.
Coastal Bend Food Bank Executive Director Bea Hanson said the holiday season is the organization's busiest because more food is needed — especially turkeys, with Thanksgiving coming up.
“Donations always increase during the holidays — at the end of the year of course — and that’s the time that we really need the money,” Hanson said.
Luckily for the food bank, Hanson said they also see an increase in the number of volunteers during the holidays.
One of those volunteers on Friday was Claire Corkill, who is a nursing student at Del Mar College.
“Nutrition is what we teach as nurses," Corkill said. "You have to have good nutrition and so this is a way to keep people healthy.”
The Coastal Bend Food Bank said it is seeing the same number of people going to its food distributions as last year and at some emergency food distributions, it is seeing even.
