People’s Family of Corporations and the St. Louis Area Foodbank has a new community resource food program for residents impacted by COVID-19 underway in the St. Louis metropolitan area. They are holding a food drive-through every Friday in the month of May. As residents arrive, they will complete a short registration form and volunteers will then place boxes of food in that family’s automobile.
The Food Drive-Thru will take place every Friday during the month of May, from 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. on the parking lot of Betty Jean Kerr People’s Health Centers, 5701 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, MO 63112.
“People’s Community Action Corporation served more than 150 individual cars (families), distributing no less than 40 pounds of food to each car,” said Dwayne Butler, CEO at People’s. The boxes included fresh produce, veggies, canned goods. “This distribution program will help serve the food needs of our most vulnerable citizens for the next many days.”
People’s Family of Corporations and the Saint Louis Area Foodbank served over 150 families last Friday. As is almost always the case when disaster strikes, People’s reminds that it is people living in poverty are often affected disproportionately. A lack of resources limits a low-income family’s ability to prepare for emergencies and their ability to recover. Based on reports from many parts of the country – and here in Missouri – low-income families have been significantly impacted as COVID-19 has spread.
The drive-through food distribution is in addition to People’s KIPP School Partnership, which provides breakfast and lunch to families with students and children Monday through Friday each morning.
“In partnership with the KIPP School, our BJK Peoples Delmar site served as a food pick-up location for needy families to receive the School Program lunches for their children during this crisis, to ensure that our children receive health lunches each day,” Butler said. “This program has been in in effect for more than a month now, providing the lunches on site, Monday thru Thursday of each week.” Butler said they currently average distributing more than 100 lunches per day through its partnership with KIPP. “This has been a tremendous success and great service to the community.”
People’s Family of Corporations includes Betty Jean Kerr People’s Health Centers, People’s Community Action Corporation, and the Amanda Luckett Murphy Hopewell Center.
The St. Louis Area Foodbank is holding a number of mobile markets throughout the St. Louis area. If you or someone you know has a vehicle, you can visit one of its Emergency Mobile Food events, which are set up to be drive-through food distributions. Volunteers and Food Bank staff will put food in the vehicle. They ask that you make space in your vehicle or trunk for the food items and that you not leave your vehicle during the distribution. For other mobile foodbank dates and locations, visit https://stlfoodbank.org/events/.
