Groups team up for monthly food distributions

Food insecurity has become an especially difficult problem to address as the pandemic drags on. Heightened unemployment combined with closed schools have led to hundreds of thousands of Michiganders – especially children – being unable to get enough to eat.

Several Kalamazoo non-profit groups are joining forces to help alleviate that problem. South Michigan Food Bank, Catholic Charities, and the Diocese of Kalamazoo plan to distribute food boxes to anyone who needs them on the third Friday of every month.

The first distribution will be this Friday, March 19. Distributions will happen at Mayor’s Riverfront Park in Kalamazoo from 2 to 4pm.

Each box will contain 25 to 35 pounds of food – enough to feed one person for five to seven days. While not enough to sustain anyone for a full month, the groups hope their efforts will at least take some of the pressure off of families in Kalamazoo.

“The plan is to do it for the foreseeable future,” said Pete Aerts, youth program coordinator for Kzoo Parks. “We don’t have any plans on stopping it. We definitely have the space and we want to get the word out so people know about it.”

You can read more on MLive.