The Greater Lansing food bank is able to feed people 365 days a year including local places like the national council on alcoholism where Betty Shaheen currently works.
“We feed people coming into treatment which are the homeless and if we didn’t have this it will be hard to run our program.”
But it’s difficult to serve families when they can’t fill the warehouse. Greater Lansing Food Bank executive director Joe Wald says the grocery stores that donate food,
“Are becoming more efficient there is less and less food for us to pick up so we are still working with them they’re still are partners, but the reality is their efficiency is impacting our supply of food.”
The shelves of the food bank look vacant which is rare around the holiday season. They would receive truckloads of food from larger retailers like Kroger and Wall-Mart, but since they are more efficient, that’s not the case this year.
“We are getting less of what we call salvage, their waste is our gold.”
Receiving less means that the food bank needs more donations and help, but it’s a year-round problem
“Hunger continues January 2nd, 3rd, and 4th, it’s not only over the holidays.”
And with the donations,
“The food bank helps us feed 14 women and we have a men’s facility so 14 men and without you guys it would be like I said very difficult to run our program.”
This holiday the food bank hopes to make sure that nobody has to go hungry and with the help of the Greater Lansing community, Wald says everyone can help end the shortage. The food bank also takes cash and check donations to purchase more supplies.