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.

Thanks to your support, from March 16–May 18 The River served:

WORTHY OF NOTE:

• Out of all the households served, 753 of them were new! In a typical month, The River registers only about 150 new households.
• Each household has taken home an average of 98 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–May 18, The River received:

WORTHY OF NOTE:

• Out of all the volunteers, 171 of them were new.
• 14 of these volunteers have served over 50 hours so far!

How can you help?