Atlanta Community Food Bank partners with schools during pandemic

It’s back to school season, yet many kids won’t be learning in a traditional classroom. School meals are a critical source of nutrition for hundreds of thousands of food-insecure children in our community. Many families will face challenges accessing those meals this year while also navigating record unemployment and economic hardship.

The Atlanta Community Food Bank has updated processes in its service area during the fall season, according to a press release. Historically, the Food Bank has offered a number of programs to supplement school meals for children and their families.

This year, there will adjustments to the programs because of the pandemic. The fall 2020 programs will include:

• Working with school districts to host strategically located pop-up food pantries that provide access to emergency food assistance for families across the district
• Partnering directly with individual schools in particularly high need areas to host pop-up food pantries that meet the needs of their particular communities
• Collaborating with other trusted community organizations that serve families with children - YMCA of Metro Atlanta, the Whitefoord Clinic, the public library systems of both Gwinnett and Cobb County, just to name a few - to provide food assistance alongside their other core services
• Connecting families to the Pandemic Electronic Benefit Transfer (P-EBT) program. This program will provide extra help to families of more than 1.1M Georgia children who could not access free or reduced price school meals as a result of schools closing in the spring.

The organization said it is closely monitoring the needs of students and families as this situation continues to unfold.

In addition, it will continue to directly distribute food boxes, fresh fruits, vegetables and proteins to families as well as supply 700 partner agencies across the greater Atlanta and north Georgia areas.