(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 on for several more blocks. As she waits in the line to receive food, 82-year-old Bobby shakes her head.
“We don’t understand how you can even keep up, because it used to be there were 30 or 40 of us in line — and now there are 200,” she says.
Bobby and Frieda always come to Mobile Markets together, and they always share the food they receive with others.
For Bobby, it’s her 4 children and her grandkids. They live together on shared land in the country and are working hard to make ends meet, but lately there’s just not enough.
It’s a story echoed by many others in the long line as the COVID-19 health crisis continues to affect this rural community.
Thanks to you, the SmartBox food pantry is now able to store and distribute more nutritious food to meet this need through a gift of 2 new 3-door freezers from Golden Harvest Food Bank.
Golden Harvest is providing more than 100 freezers to partner agencies like SmartBox so they can store and distribute frozen foods like meat and produce.
“Due to the growing numbers of families that we feed, we have begun to get more perishable foods. The freezers will be used to hold the extra items that we are now receiving,” says Phyllis Smart, SmartBox director. “We are so thankful for these additions to our SmartBox family.”
Bobby chats with volunteers as boxes of shelf-stable food and bags of potatoes, apples, and frozen meat are loaded into her trunk.
“We appreciate all that we can get. And we know that what we get is good food. We worked all our lives. And that’s all we need — good food.”
