Western Tidewater getting new, nontraditional Foodbank branch
Food insecurity rose from 2018 through pandemic
In recent years, officials at the Foodbank of Southeastern Virginia and the Eastern Shore have noticed a trend.
Levels of food insecurity — or the inability to reliably access enough food — have risen generally across Hampton Roads and nationwide, but rural communities are among those hardest hit.
In Sussex County and Franklin, west of Suffolk, for example, the percentages of the population struggling with food insecurity jumped by nearly 25% from 2018 to October amid the pandemic, according to data from the nonprofit food bank.
To combat the problem, the Foodbank is opening a new Western Tidewater Branch that will serve those localities, as well as Suffolk and Isle of Wight and Southampton counties.
“This has been something we’ve worked on for some time and it is amazing to see it come to fruition,” said Foodbank president and CEO Ruth Jones Nichols.
The branch will temporarily operate out of the Healthy Food Pantry at Franklin’s Hayden Village Center, but Jones Nichols said the organization recently closed on a 16,000-square-foot building nearby that will serve as a permanent location.
It won’t be a traditional food bank or pantry.
The vision, Jones Nichols said, is to have a commercial kitchen, marketplace and cafe where people can access healthy food at low or no cost, and flexible spaces on the second floor where people can connect with partner organizations offering education or career programs.
“The key difference is it offers that more holistic approach that can move people from being food insecure to being food secure,” she said.
In the Foodbank’s wider
service area, the number of people experiencing food insecurity in 2020 was nearly 169,000, according to the organization’s projections — a 33% increase since 2018. The number of children jumped by nearly half.
Barbara Blake, chief administrative officer at ODU’s Dragas Center for Economic Analysis and Policy, previously told the Pilot one big issue is food deserts — areas where it can be difficult to find affordable, healthy food.
They can be common in rural areas, she added, if grocery stores are far away and reliable transportation is difficult to access.
Jones Nichols said the high levels the Foodbank sees in Western Tide
water can also largely be connected to another issue: low income. Sussex and Franklin are both home to majority-minority populations, she said, who had lower incomes even before the pandemic.
The Western Tidewater Branch is powered by a $300,000 grant from the Obici Healthcare Foundation.
The Franklin location will be a home base, but the organization plans to launch programs elsewhere in the service area as well.
The Norfolk-based Foodbank has a new slogan this year that Jones Nichols said is also the core mission of the new branch: “ending hunger today, nourishing hope for tomorrow.”