Mike, a retired nurse, picks up food from the Greene County Food Pantry. The food helps Mike and his wife pay the bills and cook healthy meals. New client surveys from Golden Harvest will help the Food Bank better understand and serve neighbors like Mike. Volunteers wheel grocery carts full of food out of the Greene County Food Pantry nestled inside of the Greensboro Housing Authority at Morningside Apartments in Greensboro, GA. Mike waits outside his vehicle as volunteers load 30 pounds of food into the trunk. Mike is a retired CNA nurse who lives with his [...]

(l-r): Co-captains Rhonda and Celeste bring the It’s Spooky To Be Hungry® drive to Aiken’s Cedar Creek subdivision each year. Last year, their virtual drive raised funds for more than 36,500 meals. Celeste Malinowski and Rhonda Heath have headed up the It’s Spooky To Be Hungry® drive as neighborhood co-captains in Aiken’s Cedar Creek subdivision for more than 5 years. Those 5 years have seen changes to the 29-year-old drive, including the debut of a virtual drive option -- which Celeste and Rhonda say makes Spooky easier to captain than ever. “It’s so rewarding. We really feel [...]

Through a new partnership with Children’s Place in Aiken, S.C., Golden Harvest will provide weekend food to children who have experienced trauma. Children’s Place will also partner with the Food Bank to host a food pantry for families of the children it serves. Three home-cooked meals daily. Healthy snacks. And now, a backpack full of food for the weekend. That’s what Children’s Place, Inc. in Aiken, S.C. provides for kids like Ryan, who participates in the organization’s therapeutic daycare program. The Children’s Place childcare program provides children who have experienced trauma with counseling, behavioral and rehabilitative therapy, [...]

Dear Friends, Long before the pandemic caused thousands of community members to seek food assistance, hunger was a crisis in our area. 1 in 7 of your neighbors still face days without enough food. Golden Harvest Food Bank is committed to moving forward stronger and better equipped to serve. We are proud to announce a new Strategic Plan and 10-year vision to end hunger in our community. Our team has spent the past 9 months in a planning process driven by data from our service area and key learnings from the pandemic. Data shows an 8.8 million meal gap [...]

A volunteer packs food boxes at a contactless, drive-thru Mobile Market. Mobile Markets have become essential to our mission during the pandemic, and our volunteers help make them possible. More than a year ago, everything changed. Our Operations Team recruited the entire staff to pack hundreds of emergency food boxes. The next day, we held the Food Bank’s first drive-thru, no-contact Mobile Market. We had no idea that by the end of 2020, we would distribute more than 2.7 million meals this way -- or that a year later, it would still be the safest way to [...]

Betty, the food pantry director at BreakFree Augusta Ministries, shows off the organization’s new side-by-side refrigerator and freezer unit made possible by a Feeding America grant. The unit will help distribute more produce, milk, and meat. When the food pantry director at BreakFree Augusta Ministries heard she could get the pantry a new refrigerator/freezer unit -- for free -- she didn’t hesitate. “I jumped on it,” Betty says. “It doubled our freezer space.” About 40 families a month come through the tidy pantry tucked into the back of the church on North Leg Court in Augusta. The [...]

Wheels Up volunteers prepare food boxes at a Mobile Market in front of Golden Harvest’s Aiken Warehouse. They served 120 meals at The Master’s Table Soup Kitchen and provided 326 families with nutritious food at the Mobile Market in Aiken as part of a Day of Service. The line of cars that starts in front of Golden Harvest’s Aiken warehouse winds over a mile down side streets and out onto Banks Mill Road. Gail, a senior living in the Aiken area, pulls through the line as volunteers from private aviation company Wheels Up load food into her [...]

(l-r): Mary and Joanne wait in line at a Mobile Market food distribution provided by Unity Outreach Church in Gloverville, S.C. Since Mary’s recent surgery, medical costs have made it difficult to keep food on the table. The two attend the Mobile Market event every two weeks. Joanne and her mother, Mary, breathe the cool air drifting in through their car windows as they wait in line at the Unity Outreach Church Mobile Market distribution in Gloverville, S.C. “The food has been helping us a great deal,” Joanne says. “My mother has been in the hospital and [...]

(l-r) Frieda and Bobby share how receiving nutritious food helps maintain their health at the SmartBox food pantry in Fairfax, South Carolina. Thanks to you, the food pantry recently received 2 3-door freezers to help store and distribute more fresh foods. At the SmartBox Mobile Market distribution, cars stretch down the street as community members line up to receive food. What you don’t realize at first is how long the line is. If you had a bird’s eye view, you’d see the line of cars snake around the block, down an alleyway, across a parking lot and [...]

A guest enjoys her meal at the newly reopened Augusta Dream Center Diner. The Center’s reopening means it can provide in-person dining again, as well as crucial wraparound services like its clothes closet. At 5 p.m., Marlin straightens the tabletop menu and a bottle of hand sanitizer, then he walks to the Augusta Dream Center’s front door to begin letting in guests. It’s time for Sunday dinner. In the gym, 10 tables are set up with 4 places each so that guests can practice social distancing. Plates of food, drinks and condiments will be rolled over to [...]