Hunger Free: South Central Community Action Partnership has seen an increase in need

TWIN FALLS, Idaho (KMVT/KSVT) — The South-Central Community Action Partnership provides assistance to people in many different ways, one of them being through their food box program.

Through the USDA Emergency Food Assistance Program, the South-Central Community Action Partnership is able to help people in South Central Idaho who are struggling to afford food.

“We are classified as an emergency recipient agency, so we order and receive commodities from USDA,” said Randy Wastradowski, the community services director.

Not only does the South-Central Community Action Partnership provide food boxes to families, but they also provide food to 16 different food pantries in eight different counties.

“Here in Twin Falls at South Central we are right now averaging about 800 plus food boxes a month, if you count our Burley office, that’s another couple hundred, so in July we did 1,046 boxes between the two of us,” said Wastradowski.

He says that is about a 30% increase from July of last year. He says in 2019, they were only distributing 300 to 500 boxes a month.

Right now they are supplying more food boxes than they were during the height of the pandemic.

“Last year I did a survey and we found out that a lot of it was the typical inflation, gas prices, food prices, power bill and just not having enough cash, a lot of it too is we found out, people just not preparing for something bad to happen,” said Wastradowski.

While some of their food is donated from the USDA, they also get donations from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, and private companies as well.

“We get a sizable donation from the LDS Church, about 4 times a year we get a semi-truck full, and then we have various businesses and organizations that do food drives for us throughout the year, so we collect, well last year we collected in pounds about as much in pounds donated as we did with USDA,” said Wastradowski.

More information can be found at Kroger’s Zero Hunger | Zero Waste website.

Fred Meyer is working to ensure that nobody in the community goes hungry with a push to support local Idaho Food Banks during the month of September.

Copyright 2023 KMVT. All rights reserved.