What exactly does the Lowcountry Food Bank do?

Yesterday Kimberly published a blog post, Why a food drive,” where she talked about the need for charitable giving in South Carolina and especially here in the Lowcountry. In preparing for South Carolina Federal Credit Union’s upcoming food drive, I did a bit of research on one of our food drive partners, the Lowcountry Food Bank. (Harvest Hope is its sister food bank in the Midlands, which also falls under Feeding America food banks. Our Midlands area members will give to support Harvest Hope.) I was fascinated by what I learned and am convinced this is an organization we should all work to support because of the good things they are doing in our community:

The Lowcountry Food Bank is a collaboration of local, non-profit human and social service providers, religious organizations, donors from the food industry, corporate, government, civic and private sectors, and individual volunteers whose support and partnership focuses on feeding the poor and hungry of the ten coastal counties in South Carolina.

They collect, inspect, maintain, and distribute otherwise wasted food products from many sources. The Food Bank also offers resources such as nutrition education, safe food handling practices and more.

So who are the beneficiaries from their collection and education efforts?

• 22% of their clients are children under age 18. Without the help of the Food Bank and their partner agencies, these children would go to bed hungry, impacting their ability to learn.
• The Lowcountry Food Bank provides boxes of nutritionally balanced food products to over 1300 seniors per month. 
• In all, 250,000 people in the 10-county area serviced by the Lowcountry Food Bank go hungry every day. The food bank works with nearly 350 partner agencies to help them.

For more information, check out their site, lowcountryfoodbank.org. After you do your research I’m sure you’ll end up asking yourself the same question Kimberly asked yesterday: How can you not give?