A Soldier from the South Carolina National Guard distributes fresh produce from Golden Harvest’s new refrigerated van at The Smart Box Food Pantry in Fairfax, SC.
The car line at Friday food distributions at The Smart Box in Fairfax, S.C., is always long. Hungry families know they’ll receive boxes of nonperishable items, produce and frozen meat. But at a June distribution, they got a surprise — boxes of fresh dairy, meat and produce transported by our new refrigerated van that was purchased through a grant funded by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.
Even now, when calls for food assistance have tripled, it’s important that Golden Harvest and its community partners provide those in need with a variety of healthy food items. But in rural areas or communities far from our warehouse locations, transporting perishable items is one of the biggest challenges to meeting our Healthy Plate goals.
Our two new vans will help change all that. Thanks to a donation from Jeff Bezos to Feeding America partner food banks across the U.S., we will be able to transport thousands of pounds of refrigerated food items to rural communities in need each week.
AJ unpacks oranges from his family’s emergency food box.
Mae and Francine drove over to the food distribution together. Carpooling to pick
up their Senior Food Boxes and other items was one more way to make their budgets stretch, and that’s important.
“It helps a lot because where I’m working at now, I got a downcut in pay.” Mae says. She switched jobs to work closer to home but at the hospital “we get less pay, so grocery wise this comes in handy.”
Both women have had to work harder to make ends meet the last few months. Francine’s brother has moved in temporarily because he lost his job in Charleston due to COVID-19.
(l-r) Francine and Mae wait to receive emergency boxes full of fresh food.
