COVID-19 Emergency Food Fund Impact

How is The River Food Pantry responding to COVID-19?

We’ve adapted our services to meet the growing nutritional needs of food-insecure households in Dane County for the duration of the pandemic. We’ve placed our hot meal and clothing programs on hold. But we’ve increased our hours of distribution while meeting an increased demand for emergency food and supplies.

We’ve also established The River’s COVID-19 Emergency Food Fund to provide:

• Boxes of groceries, including perishable and non-perishable foods, for thousands of local households to pick up curbside at The River once a week.
• Pre-bagged lunches for children delivered six days a week through MUNCH, The River’s mobile lunch program, to nine low-income Northside neighborhoods.
• Ready-to-eat meals for families to take home through our newest program, called FAM (Family At-Home Meals).

Thanks to your support, from March 16–July 2 The River served:

WORTHY OF NOTE:

• The River registered 946 new families since March 16. New registrations per month increased by 80% compared to before COVID-19!
• Each household has taken home an average of 109 pounds of emergency food and supplies per visit.
• MUNCH has distributed an average of 200 mobile lunches per day to children in 9 low-income neighborhoods: Oak Park Terrace, Ridgecrest, Vera Court, Parkcrest Apartments, Brentwood Parkway, Packers Townhouse, Northport Apartments, Kipling Drive, as well as Kennedy Heights.

From March 16–July 2, The River received:

WORTHY OF NOTE:

• Out of all the volunteers, 255 of them were new.

How can you help?