FORT WAYNE, Ind. (WANE) – September is Hunger Action Month, a time to raise awareness of food insecurity and to inspire the community to volunteer their food, or their time, to halt hunger.
At Community Harvest Food Bank, several shelves are stocked with cans, bags and boxes of food, ready to be thrown into the shopping cart.
The nonprofit cycles through one million pounds of food each month. Katie Savoie, director of development at Community Harvest, said that stockpile of food is still not enough to feed the estimated 99,000 food-insecure people in northeast Indiana.
Savoie said the food bank has seen a decline in food throughout the past couple years.
“The food landscape has gone through a lot of change,” Savoie said. “As a trend, I would say that donations from certain places have gone down, and it’s just a matter of rising costs and increased efforts to reduce waste.”
It came to a point in April when Community Harvest officially limited the amount of food one family could take to half of the normal amount. This new rule lets those in need walk out with 50 pounds of produce instead of their usual hundred-pound bounty.