Local nonprofit doing more to tackle food insecurity

Local nonprofit Starkville Strong recently announced their plans to begin the Second Servings Initiative.

This initiative has long been in the works and will allow Starkville Strong to collaborate with local businesses and organizations to collect surplus food, safely store, and redistribute to individuals and families facing food insecurity.

Brandi Herrington, Executive Director of Starkville Strong, spoke about the level of food insecurity in the community and how the goal of this initiative is to tackle that epidemic.

“For about two years, we've been seeing the level of waste and good food that is being thrown away in massive quantities,” said Herrington. “With our community being food insecure and the number of food insecure growing, there's just a very big opportunity to kill two birds with one stone by taking waste and not having it go nowhere.”

Herrington also explained how this will help alleviate the burden of food waste in the community.

“This will ease the burden of waste and at the same time, it will allow our neighbors in need to have additional food that they can maybe be supported enough to put those funds towards rent and electricity,” Herrington explained.

Two organizations who helped to make this possible are Chi Omega Sorority at Mississippi State and local cleaning service, Worker Bees.

Shannon Voges-haupt with Worker Bees expressed her excitement for the initiative and her hopes that it will do more to contribute to the cause of food insecurity while tackling waste.

“We're all really excited about it,” said Voges-haupt. “Right now, we're kind of in the mode of just trying to figure out the logistics of it…but we're pretty excited about how it started and that it looks like there will be a good amount of food that we can save and put to good use.”

Voges-haupt also called for any local businesses or individuals who would like to donate or get involved to consider donating containers for food distribution.

For more information or to get involved, visit https:// starkvillestrong.info/second_ Servings_interest .