A food bank in the Southside community of Halifax County is celebrating the opening of a new building, which will serve as the headquarters for their operations.
Inside a brightly painted building in the small town of Halifax, Deborah Griles is sorting donated food. She organizes vegetables, peanut butter and jelly, spaghetti and crackers into stacks, preparing them to be loaded onto a delivery truck later in the week.
Griles is the president of Feed Halifax, a nonprofit that formed several years ago as a coalition of area food banks. She and everyone who works here is a volunteer.
She says over the past year they’ve all seen a lot more people coming to food banks, and said changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program have likely driven a lot of that increase.
“The demand is higher, definitely higher. People need the food,” Griles said. She’s also noticed a growing awareness in her community that there is a need to help more people.
“And they understand that just because you may go to a food pantry to get food, it doesn’t mean that you’re not trying,” Griles said. “It means that, you know, you could be one of the many working poor that we have who do all they can do to provide for their family. But the cost of food has increased so much.”
Feed Halifax has a program where they distribute food to emergency lockers in South Boston and Halifax. Clients can access food at these lockers at any time.
Their group opened their first building in Halifax last month. Previously, they had been operating out of a church. Now they can accept larger donations and stock food for larger deliveries.
This Saturday, September 5, for the first time their group will deliver a trailer with 100 bags of food to a rural area of Halifax County.
Griles says with their new trailer they can now bring food to more areas where people may have trouble getting to a food bank.
