Pandemic causes unprecedented need
San Antonio Food Bank donated $160M worth of groceries in the last year
Like a third of the people the San Antonio Food Bank has seen this past year, Henrietta Lopez didn’t need help until the coronavirus pandemic hit.
She’s retired with a limited income. Her husband, a supervisor at a hotel, had his hours cut. And they have a 14-year-old daughter to feed. So in December, she finally turned to the Food Bank.
“It means a lot,” Lopez said. “We try to share with neighbors that are struggling.”
Lopez, 67, arrived at Northside ISD’S Gustafson Stadium at 2:05 a.m. Friday morning to be sure she would get groceries for her family. She was one of the 1,205 households that took home about 100 pounds of food — including pinto beans, pan dulce, prepared meals from H-E-B, bacon, cream of broccoli soup and turkey, among other goods.
She said the food would last several weeks.
The need for food in the community increased to unprecedented levels because of the pandemic, said San Antonio Food Bank CEO Eric Cooper.
The agency distributed more than $160 million in food from March 2020 through February, feeding 625,000 people. About 39 percent of those people had never been to the Food Bank before.
Before the pandemic began, the San Antonio Food Bank would feed an average of 60,000 people a week. As officials have been saying for months, that figure quickly doubled to 120,000 and the need has not diminished.
Children at risk
Children are a major part of that group. In Texas, 1 in 7 kids already struggled with food insecurity before the pandemic, and the virus made it so much worse.
As COVID-19 spread throughout the community, causing rampant job loss and pushing children out of their schools, hunger more than doubled, forcing 1 in 3 Texas children to go hungry, according to No Kid Hungry, a campaign to end childhood hunger.
“It’s been a challenge to get kids fed,” Cooper said, with school cafeterias closed.
Friday, the Food Bank announced the No Kid Hungry campaign donated $198,000 to the agency for a new truck that delivers food directly to schools and other distribution sites.
San Antonio companies and individuals also have stepped up to the plate. Donations increased by 24 percent from the previous year, the Food Bank said in its impact report released this week.
The Food Bank also saw almost 100 volunteers per hour of operation in the pandemic year, with volunteers putting in a cumulative 183,099 hours of work. In 2017, the last year for which figures are available, volunteers put in 162,605 hours.
‘All walks of life’
Some of the hours in 2020 came from Bill and Cindy Scorpio, a retired couple in their early 60s. Having worked with a food bank in Ohio, the two started volunteering right before the pandemic started and now try to donate time every week.
“There’s tons more people,” Cindy Scorpio said, with her husband adding the people in line come from “all walks of life.”
“It seems like it’s a broader spectrum of individuals,” he said. “Previously, when you worked at the food bank, there would be a certain demographic that you’d meet more often. Now it’s almost everybody.”
The Food Bank usually serves 16 counties, including Bexar, but expanded to 29 counties once the pandemic started to help more of the surrounding rural
communities, Cooper said.
Families with children 18 and under who need food can text “Food” or “Comida” to 877877 to find free meals nearby.
The next mega food distribution is 9-11 a.m. Friday at Heroes Stadium, 4799 Thousand Oaks Drive.
Those who want to get food should pre-register at Safoodbank.org.
The Food Bank headquarters at 5200 Enrique M. Barrera Parkway is also open for food distribution from 1 to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday and 9 to 11 a.m. Saturday.
To reach the Food Bank for assistance or to volunteer, call 210-431-8326.