There’s still time to help the West Texas Food Bank in the effort to help its fellow food bank in Asheville, N.C., which was destroyed by Hurricane Helene.
Libby Stephens, CEO of West Texas Food Bank, said they will be at First Alert 7 at Music City Mall talking about the food drive and taking donations all day Oct. 24.
They have been conducting a drive over the last couple of weeks and for the next week or so they are still asking people or corporations for donations to help out the MANNA Food Bank in Asheville. It is run by Claire Neal.
Stephens said MANNA is rural and covers about 9,000 square miles.
“She lost everything. They literally have a slab left and three walls. She’s had to find a satellite location. They’ve had a hard time getting electricity hooked up. They’ve had to get Amazon to get refrigerated trailers so that she has refrigeration for her products,” Stephens said.
She added that Neal has been doing distributions in parking lots and just wherever they can. They have been able to give out water mainly and MREs (Meals Ready to Eat).
“Most of the people she actually serves are very rural so they’re up in the hills … She’s had to find innovative and creative ways to reach those people including things like ATVs, mules and donkeys actually having to get supplies up to people because they are literally trapped because roads and bridges have been completely washed out,” Stephens said. “It’s a very hard, ugly, sad situation.”
She added that Neal does a lot of good work and she knew if she made a call out to people in the Basin, they would rally to help another food bank.
“We wanted to do an organized drive to give Claire time to get her satellite facility up and running and make sure we have all the goodies that we are collecting is put together in a meaningful way because she really doesn’t have a volunteer workforce right now because everyone’s trying to just survive themselves,” Stephens said.
“With that being said, we decided to do a two or three week drive and collect what we can and then have a volunteer day for people to come and help sort and process and put everything in how it needs to be put together in emergency relief boxes and drive in and stock Claire’s shelves for the first time in her new satellite facility,” she added.
People can still donate. Stephens suggests bottled water, Gatorade, sports drinks, foods that have pop tops, beef jerky, protein bars, crackers, peanut butter and crackers, cheese and crackers, Clorox wipes, baby wipes, hand sanitizer, duct tape, tarps, mops, brooms, bleach and trash bags.
“This is definitely more of a marathon than a sprint when you think what it’s going to take to recover from this,” she said.
Stephens said they are also taking cash donations. ICA recently donated $50,000 each to the food bank and Red Cross for hurricane relief efforts.
“You can get on our website and click donate and in the notes section just put North Carolina or MANNA, which is the name of the food bank, and we will make sure that gets to Claire immediately. Once we put everything together, we will be driving in and delivering it to Asheville, N.C.,” Stephens said.
She added that the West Texas Food Bank is super excited about helping their food bank brethren.
“We’ve always had huge success when we’ve done this before. I go back to Hurricane Harvey and some other emergency situations and we’ve always been able to provide assistance. We may be small, but we are mighty out here in West Texas. We also want to make sure it’s organized. We want to make sure that things get there at the right time when people need them,” Stephens said.
