Thousands of South Florida jobs have been lost due to the pandemic, putting stress on local food banks trying to meet the increased demand for assistance.

We look at the rise in food insecurity and ways to help local communities in need.

Stay with us as we dive into Your South Florida.

Hello and welcome to Your South Florida, I'm Sandra Viktorova filling in for Pam Giganti.

Well, more than 256,000 South Florida jobs have been lost because of the pandemic, that according to if I use metropolitan center.

For a growing number of South Floridians that lost income means they have to turn to local food banks for help.

Community organizations are struggling to meet the increased demand for help.

A recent census survey show South Florida is one of the top Metro areas in the country for food insecurity.

More than 15% of local adults say they sometimes or often didn't have food to eat.

As part of our most recent town hall Boca Helping Hands' Gregory Hazle, SOS Foundation's Emilyy Nixon, and Mobile School Pantry's Zeina Zein join me to look at the pandemics impact on local food banks and ways we can all help those in need.

Gregory, let me start off with you.

I want you to tell us about the services that Boca Helping Hands provides, who can turn to you for help.

We want people to understand, you know, do they have to sign up do they call in, especially during the pandemic.

Some people may be at home and don't feel comfortable going out.

How does it work?

Who can turn to you for help?

Boca Helping Hands is a multi-service agency and perhaps that's what distinguishes us in our community is the range of services that we offer.

The first area in which our services provide support is in the area of child hunger relief.

We work with a number of local elementary schools to provide weekend backpacks for kids who depend on the free lunch program at the schools for most of their nutritional needs.

We also assist working families to pay for the cost of childcare on summer camps.

The second broad area of services in our job training and mentoring, and we provide scholarships for the unemployed and underemployed to pursue new or better job opportunities in the local job market.

And we work with local vocational training schools in offering scholarships in a number of career areas in different industries.

Thirdly, we provide improved access to affordable healthcare for people in our community who are uninsured or underinsured.

We help subsidize the cost of our partners, local clinics as well as we cover the cost of certain services provided by them in the medical dental and behavioral care.

And kind of coming back to where we all started is in the area of adult hunger relief.

We have a number of feeding programs that are directed at adults.

The one that touches most people is our Pantry Bag Distribution Program in which we are distributing pantry bags in several locations throughout Palm Beach County.

That particular program, because one of the sources of food is the federal government through the USDA.

People have to sign up to participate.

So anybody who would qualify for federal assistance in any of the federal assistance programs would be eligible to participate in our Pantry Bag Distribution Program and somewhere around close to 30,000 people per year receive pantry bags, depending on the size of their family, a number of pantry bags each month.

The other programs are generally available to anybody that lives in Palm Beach County and has a need for those services.

So, you know, we see people from all over the Tri-County area coming to us for assistance in one form or the other.

Zee, let's turn to you a moment, now your organization works directly with local TitleOne Schools, tell us how this Mobile School Pantry works.

So Mobile School Pantry's mission, we're a volunteer driven organization established in 2013.

I mean our mission is to provide fresh fruits and vegetables and non-perishables to families at low-income schools in Broward County.

Our focus is definitely on the fresh produce, the apples oranges, the grapes, the things that are out of access to families in some communities.

And we set this up like a farmer's market for families.

Pre-pandemic we would set it up in the cafeterias of elementary schools where families were able to come and do their own shopping.

We'd set up tablecloths with baskets and they would be overflowing with about 15 to 25 different fresh fruits and vegetables, along with our non-perishables.

And it was a client choice pantry.

So at dismissal time, we had our students coming our children coming with their parents and they would come and they do their own shopping and they practice the math 'cause we would put numbers in front of each item.

So giving the choice back to our families 'cause they know their own dietary needs and their restrictions and giving that choice just 'cause you need food assistance doesn't mean you can't have the choice to choose those healthy food items that you would like.

Now this pandemic, it definitely shifted our model of distribution.

And we have now started pre-packaged reusable bags weekly every Friday.

And we have worked with the Broward County School System to help us continue our distribution models throughout the pandemic since March.

Emily, the SOS Foundation has two food pantries and a community kitchen.

Who are you primarily serving right now?

That's great, so we have a food pantry in Key West and another pantry in the uppermost Key, Key Largo.

We also operate a community kitchen which the goal is to provide meals to low-income children and seniors through federal nutrition programs.

So we prepare everything mostly from scratch at the community kitchen.

So we are able to focus on the fresh fruits and vegetables, the lean proteins, some of the notoriously more expensive ingredients that are often unfortunately inaccessible to low income families.

At the food pantries, we try to do the same through something called food recovery which is the act of picking up edible food that would have otherwise been wasted and making it available to people.

We're able to offer thousands of pounds of fresh produce, dairy products and meats each day to people who might not otherwise have been able to afford them.

So we are serving on average about 10,000 unduplicated individuals, families, adults, children, each year pre COVID.

That number has almost tripled since March of 2020 with the increased demand.

But we're starting to see those numbers level out a little bit but definitely still heightened demand down here in the keys.

Gregory, can you jump in on that like, volume wise for your organization, how many more people are you having to serve?

Before the pandemic, we were serving somewhere around 8,000 families throughout Palm Beach County.

Once the pandemic hit around 5,000 new families signed up to receive pantry bags.

So obviously that's a significant increase.

We're distributing pantry bags six days a week here in Boca, four days a week in Boynton and on weekends in Western Boca and up in Lantana.

The increase that we've seen has been seen in all of those locations.

As Emily described earlier we are also seeing kind of a plateauing effect.

You know, the rate of increase has somewhat stabilized.

So that rate of increase that we saw at the beginning of the pandemic has not been sustained over this time.

Zee, could you just touch on that.

What changes did you see pre-pandemic to where we are today?

Our model of distribution is a little different, so it's not like a food pantry or a soup kitchen which is more open to the public, the general public, right?

Our organization focuses on schools.

And these are preregistered schools that have 90% or more free breakfast and lunch available to their students, which is kind of identifying that 90% of the school is in need.

So we take on these schools prior to the pandemic and these families registered through their school.

If you attend the school, if you are a TA, a teacher assistant or a custodian or a cafeteria worker at the school, you have access to our food pantry as well.

So every school has to attend their school distribution especially after Parkland.

So for security reasons, we're not open to the public.

So when the pandemic happened we did do some additional pop-ups, is what we call them.

They're one-time events that we go to into a community who, and it's funded through a sponsor.

We did do four of those pop-ups with Memorial Healthcare System we did two with, we did two with the Children's Service Council of Broward County and the Henri Crockett Foundation in partnership with them where we served from 200 to 300 families at each of these distributions.

And then our numbers, we serve, you know, 1600 families every year annually right now.

And these families, I would say, you know, you get some that show maybe every time and then you have some that come, you know, maybe six times out of the year, but when the pandemic hit we just had a higher attendance.

And as time went on, you know, you see that maybe not everybody's coming to every single one.

But we did have some changes in transportation with these long lines that you see in these communities, everyone's waiting for food but these are people with cars.

And most people who really need food assistance don't necessarily have cars.

So we partnered with 211 Broward and the United way of Broward County and DoorDash.

And we have been able to do deliveries to families with no transportation to help with that barrier.

So that family is, you know, in the beginning of the pandemic, we were all saying, you know, pop up the trunk of your car and we're gonna put the food in, windows up, masks on.

So we were so grateful for that partnership with DoorDash, right now, we're getting about 40 to 50 families are receiving, you know, DoorDash and DoorDash is increasing our capacity in the coming months to allow more families who don't have that transportation, who lack that access to be able to benefit from our distributions.

Before we continue last week, we met with the people behind a Village dge.

It's a community outreach initiative providing free food and meals to those in need in Miami-Dade County.

Thanks to donations and community partnerships are helping many residents that might otherwise go hungry.

My name is Danny Agnew, and I'm the Co-founder of the Roots Collective.

The Roots Collective is a community-based organization.

We started in around 2014 and under our umbrella we have several different entities into our ecosystem.

We have a printing company, a clothing line, a black and brown specific marketplace.

We have an event space and then we also do community-based events as well.

As a space, a few doors down that was the original black house.

Right now we're in the newest space but that's where we started our mission.

COVID came at us full force, in August things shifted business kind of slowed down and Sherina reached out to us to maybe do some things for the community.

My name is Sherina Jones and I'm the founder of Village (FREE)dge.

What sparked this initiative is just all the chain of events that was happening due to the COVID crisis.

So many people are losing their jobs.

Children were at home with their moms.

Moms are trying to figure out a way to keep food on the table with their hours being cut.

Some of these parents probably were making decisions if they use gas money or the last $20 to put a meal on the table.

So Village (FREE)dge was created to combat that issue right there.

The first fridge she bought with her own money I think it was a $200 fridge, really something quick and easy.

We plugged it into the original black house and we started to see how many people came to the dge.

And I think the most shocking thing that we saw was that I had went to Wynwood to get food for myself.

And two of the individuals who used the dge daily, worked at one of the spots that I ate at and Wynwood.

So it helped me understand how serious the wealth gap is here, where people have jobs and they still need to come get food from the dge.

And so the process was fairly simple but it grew very rapidly.

The people that visit the Village (FREE)dge, they all come from different walks of life.

People think that the community fridge is only for homeless people, but it's for everyone that's experiencing a hard time because we all have hardships in our lives.

So the people that are coming, they're just looking for that little extra help to get them by and maybe get them by to the next pay period or to their next, you know, elevation in their life.

But that's what the village dge is here for.

We're here to just fill that void.

[agnew] We've completely given this the space that we had to Sherina to run.

And so she has about four to five staff daily that use, that help make the fridge a reality.

There are also two other locations where the fridges are.

Most of the food are food donations.

If I don't get food donations through the cash donations that we receive, I purchase the groceries.

And also we get donations through farm share and other organizations that rescue food.

So that's how we keep the pantry field.

We sell gently used clothing donations because a lot of our village members, they ask for clothes, shoes, blankets, any personal items.

So shower gel, washing powder, toothpaste, toothbrush they all need of all of those items.

Outside of feeding the village in the community members.

We want to help them get back into the natural hustle and bustle of life whether they need therapy counseling to further their education, to help them find jobs, whatever they need, we're here to help them Because I come from a community organizing background.

My goal is to make sure that the city sees the void that we're filling in place of what they're not doing.

We wanna just make sure that people aren't in need.

And then as well, we wanna highlight that we need help from a larger scale.

Right now we actually have a Facebook question that I want to take, this comes from Donna.

And I'll like, let you guys answer that question.

Are there ways that people who are uncomfortable with leaving their homes right now can still help, can still volunteer, can still be part of the solution here?

Sure, we had a kind of a transition in our volunteer community.

Obviously a lot of the folks who volunteer for an organization like ours are our retirees and they were in the at risk community.

So we actually lost a lot of volunteers early on in the pandemic.

Fortunately, the schools were also closed.

So we replaced them with the kids that were out of school.

So we were able to maintain kind of a workforce but in some of the other programs that we offer, such as our job training and mentoring, such as in the financial assistance that we offer.

A lot of the case management work can be done by telephone or online.

And we have volunteers involved in those activities who not have to, you know, show up in person to our facilities.

So there are a whole bunch of different opportunities that people can still help us with from home.

Just like Greg said at the beginning of the pandemic, you know, a lot of our volunteers as well were coming out and then slowly as time went on and thanks to the help of Hands on Broward.

And we were able to get a good amount of people back out again, people feel comfortable at our distributions and our giveaways because they are outdoors both of them.

So if you wanna come and enjoy a beautiful day out while giving back to your community, well great place to come.

We pack our bags up at the state farmer's market and it's under an overhang.

And when we come to our schools and the carpool lines where you have overhangs as well, and we are practicing our social distancing and thankfully that we're outside.

Emily, can people help if they, well, one can they help in general?

And if somebody doesn't feel comfortable going in person, can they do anything from home?

Sure, so we are still doing outside distributions as well in an effort to keep staff and volunteers safe as well as our clients safe.

So people do feel safer, now we make sure everyone wears masks and goes through the proper and sanitation and everything that the CDC recommends in an effort to keep everyone as safe as possible while the distributions are going on.

If someone is not comfortable leaving their house, our largest push right now as an organization is to make sure that people who qualify for snap benefits know how to sign up for SNAP benefits.

Sometimes there can be issue whether it be a computer issue, someone doesn't have access or a language barrier, or just simply not understanding some of the questions in their required information.

We wanna make sure that everyone who qualifies for this federal assistance program is able to access the program.

So that's one way that we are able to utilize volunteers in kind of a different way than we normally would have during this pandemic.

Emily, what's the toughest part of your job?

I imagine this is sort of the struggle here is that as hard as you work, right, you're not gonna fix the problem the people keep coming and need, right?

Of course, I mean, I think that you hit the nail right on the head that unfortunately in our country there will always be a certain level of need.

Like Greg said, our goal as SOS is to create more financially secure families while also helping to improve the long-term health and nutrition of those families.

During the pandemic, I mean, it was heartbreaking to see, not only in Monroe County but throughout South Florida and across the nation, cars of families lined up for sometimes miles just to get something that is such a basic human needs such as food.

So it truly is heartbreaking to reassess so many families who had come through the lines, who would hold up signs that would say, "Thank You", or "God Bless" or just even just something as simple as "Have a Nice Day."

So it was heartwarming to see those kinds of friends but at the end of the day just simply heartbreaking that so many families in our community are put in that place of need, during COVID, but the reality is, unfortunately it's on a regular basis as well, not just during the pandemic.

Zee, you wanna add anything to that?

Absolutely, you know, just seeing the messages that you get, a lot of my families will text us and just say, you know, I lost my job, you know, I have to move my children, I have nowhere to go, you know, and just imagine we all have children, you know, if you're at home watching, you know, think of a child that's close to you, it could be your grandchild, it could be your own child.

It could be, you know, a relative, a cousin and it's just, when you think of that child going to bed hungry, it's just such a terrible feeling to think of.

And to see these families waiting in these long lines for hours and their children waiting in line kind of not knowing what's going on but excited to get something I know at our distributions we add a component like books, TitleOne Team for Broward County schools comes out and they've been giving books out at every distribution, along with Little lollipops and maybe some muffins and the kids get really excited to get something special for them.

We have to think, you know, kids spend the majority of their time in schools, pre-pandemic.

So the meals that they would get, they're not necessarily all getting now.

Because if we go back to that transportation issue and that parent who's now working and who can't go and pick up the meals from school that are being provided by the school districts.

You have a lot of kids who are relying on these meals and on the snacks and the dinners and the aftercare meals that are simply not getting them now because their parents can't get to the school to pick them up.

And that means there are a greater number of children, not eating food, because school is closed, you know, and schools are reopening slowly and everybody's comfort levels at a different level.

And these are a lot of children being impacted and in 2019 Feeding America said there was 12 million children who are food insecure and, you know July, 2020, there was 18 million, you know, we went from one in six to one in four children who were food insecure, you know, and if that's not a reason for us as a community to work together to find solutions to hunger.

Hunger is solvable, hunger is curable, it's not cancer.

Hunger if we worked together in our great nation with the abundance of food and funds, there's no child or family who should struggle to put food on their tables.

And anyone can jump on this question.

Has the pandemic impacted your ability to get funding?

In our case, I think that's been the silver lining of the pandemic because what it has shown is just how much of a conscience or community has in a time of need.

We've actually seen increased donations, increased participation in the form of food drives from our community.

So it's a little bit inspiring, you know, to even with the much greater demand that we're seeing because of the pandemic.

We're also seeing that our communities behind the work that we do and they wanna find a way to participate.

And, you know, last year was a record year for our organization in terms of fundraising.

So that's the upside.

Emily, Zee, have you seen a change in the amount of donations or being able to secure funding?

I think that the most dramatic change that we saw down here in Monroe County was the impact on in-kind donations.

So obviously as a food pantry and as a community kitchen, we rely primarily on donated food.

And those donation channels, Publix, Winn-Dixie, all of the major groceries as well as Farm Share and Feeding South Florida.

They themselves either as businesses or as nonprofit organizations were equally as taxed as a local food pantries as well.

So those donation channels, "kind of dried up" for a while, just due to this increase in demand.

Everyone in South Florida understands the impacts of a hurricane coming through.

And it really is a rather isolated instance, whereas this pandemic has been nationwide.

And so these impacts on distribution channels and on donation channels are happening at the national level.

And it really has impacted our local food pantries ability to procure and secure enough food to meet the ground need.

Like Greg said, plus side of that is we have seen an increase in financial donations but really that money is going right out the door in purchased food that we are having to provide to make up for what would normally be donated food.

Before we go, I wanna real quick go to each of you really quick, at this point what is your greatest need?

If somebody is listening, they wanna help, what can they do?

Sure, so we're now beginning to see the second phase of how people are responding to the pandemic.

People who have lost jobs are coming for more assistance with job training.

People who, you know, were protected by rent moratoriums and so on now are exposed to financial crisis because they have months of overdue rent.

So the financial needs that we have for responding to this phase of how people are looking for help from the pandemic, are more significant.

So financial contributions are perhaps the most significant way that people can help us now.

Emily, is that the same for you?

It would be the same.

We are always in need for volunteers.

So I would be doing our organization and injustice not to at least mention that knowing that some people do not feel comfortable right now with in-person volunteering.

As Greg said really financial contributions are the best way to assist right now.

SOS has purchasing power and the ability to procure food at wholesale rates that individual consumers can not purchase for the same price as at the retail level.

So cash donations, check donations, we're able to stretch that money further than the individual would.

So if you can contribute financially we're always looking for volunteers assistance.

And Zee, you wanna wrap it for us?

And in any non-profit, you know, our buying power is definitely better.

So funds are always useful, but you know, we're a community.

And when we use our voices and our platforms and our social media pages to spread the word and spread awareness on everybody's mission.

And for us, it's just to say no to hunger and make sure that children have the right tools to learn growing thrive.

And when you get the word out, the funding comes naturally, right?

Because more people wanna help.

So share, share, share, come out and volunteer, check out our work and join our mission and help, let's make hunger something that we eradicate, it's possible when we work together.

And you can watch the full Town Hall on our Facebook page at YourSouthFL.

Thanks so much for watching and we'll see you next time.