CW Rotary Club President Yasmith Johnson and Chad Robinson Food Bank of Delaware Director of External Affairs
Chad Robinson, Director of External Affairs at the Food Bank of Delaware visited the Camden Wyoming Rotary Club at their meeting on September 21st to review the work the Food Bank does in Delaware. He talked about the over 16,000,000 pounds of food distributed between July 1, 2021, and June 30, 2022; that included 4,290,000 pounds of produce and 2,591,000 pounds of meat. By county, this broke down to 8,516,000 pounds in New Castle County, 4,272,000 pounds in Kent County and 3,600,000 pounds in Sussex County.
Chad spoke about the impact of Covid on the residents of Delaware and how the Food Bank ramped up to provide services to those in need. The Food Bank has a variety of programs in addition to the distribution of food. They have a nutrition and education outreach program, a food bank farm, and a culinary school which is a 14-week program for unemployed, underemployed common individuals with disabilities to learn skills in food service.
The Food Bank of Delaware distributed over 170,000 backpack meal kits. Over 41,000 of the food deliveries were made to people’s homes by Amazon and DoorDash. The food bank had 15,541 volunteer visits with over 46,000 hours donated. To help with the increased need in Kent and Sussex County the Food Bank will build a larger warehouse in Milford.
