What a year it has been! The COVID-19 pandemic shed a new light on food insecurity and the importance of hunger relief organizations across our nation, and at home here in Medina County. The support of our local businesses, community partners, and you—our community members, volunteers, donors, and champions—allowed us to better serve those who needed us during this time.
Feeding Medina County did not skip a beat during the “shelter in place” orders, and began offering distributions weekly rather than monthly to support those who were unable to work and provide for themselves and their families. With the help of the National Guard, community volunteers, and our local school districts, we continued
packing and distributing our Weekender Bags for Children and began offering evening pick up times for families of remote/distance learning children across the county. Our Staples for Seniors volunteers began offering door-todoor drop off bags for apartment complexes who were not comfortable having their seniors pick up food in their community rooms, as they had done pre-pandemic.
In 2020, your support allowed Feeding Medina County to distribute 789,277 pounds of food to Medina County residents in need. We anticipate that this need is not going away as our community begins the slow process of recovering from the pandemic. Sadly, Feeding America estimates that nearly 24,880 adults and 9,140 children are now facing food insecurity in Medina County alone. This means that although we are reaching more people than ever, there is still work to be done.
The pandemic certainly brought its challenges, but it also created opportunities for Feeding Medina County to mobilize and modify our services to better serve our community, both in the moment and moving into the future. We learned that we can better serve our community by bringing food distributions closer to them and began exploring new partnerships to make this happen. In April 2021, we debuted our first food distribution at Hidden Hollow Camp in Lodi which was made possible by our partners at the Akron Canton Regional Food Bank, the Medina County Park District, and of course, all of our donors and supporters. Currently, we are working on securing two more sites in the county to ensure that no one has to drive over twenty minutes to get to a distribution site in Medina County. This May we also began delivering our Staples for Seniors bags to disabled adults living in subsidized housing in Medina County to better serve these residents—many of whom cannot drive to a distribution site.
With your continued support Feeding Medina County will move forward with mobilizing our mission and finding new ways to educate, engage, and lead our community in creating an environment where no one goes hungry. Thank you for supporting Feeding Medina County’s critical work in our community—none of this would be possible without you.