Second Harvest of the Big Bend

"We’ve not seen temperatures like this in a long time”

In the 16 counties the food bank serves, over half of the residents are living paycheck-to-paycheck.

Envision Credit Union's "Envision No Hunger" campaign matched any community contribution up to $30,000 over a 5-year period.

The plastic buckets containing hurricane preparedness supplies were donated by a Tallahassee business consulting firm.

"They’re just troupers." The food bank hasn’t missed a beat in responding to last month’s tornadoes, despite having to lay off 20 employees in March.

The event's usual venue at the Godby High School cafeteria was heavily damaged by flooding in April, so the food pack-a-thon moved to Fairview Middle School.

The May 10th tornados in Tallahassee damaged and destroyed hundreds of homes and knocked out power. But the extended outages have resulted in a massive amount of food spoilage in a food-insecure area of the state. Now, local residents are restocking their fridges and freezers with help from Second Harvest of the Big Bend.

With some residents going nearly a week without electricity, the contents of their refrigerators and freezers were a total loss.

The Leon County program is a partnership effort involving multiple agencies and service providers.

Executive Director Monique Ellsworth said her organization isn't the only food bank now struggling with new grant reductions and restrictions.