Westchester County was the epicenter at the beginning of the pandemic … and food banks there had a lot of on the job training in how to deal with a surge in demand.
Matthew Honeycutt is vice president for development at Feeding Westchester … he says one problem has been manpower.
"People are stuck at home so they can’t come do food drives for us, they can’t come volunteer for us right now cause we don’t have a system for bringing them into the building, which we have to get ramped up pretty soon because I think we’re gonna lose the National Guard probably at the end of the month. "
Honeycutt says right now they’re feeding about half a million families … up from 200,000 in a typical year. In March they gave out a million and a half pounds of food … about twice the usual amount.
Click above to hear Janice Kirkel's report on the hurdles facing Feeding Westchester during the coronavirus pandemic.