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It’s summer time! That means fun and sun, and the kids are out of school – which means no breakfast or lunch programs for those in our community that are food insecure, summer can be one of the most difficult times to feed everyone. And with high food prices, the food bank and food pantry see higher demand.
Tillamook County has two summer food programs – Grub Club, serving central Tillamook County, and Munch-A-Lunch, serving North Tillamook County.
See below for the drop off locations, times and more details.
Now’s the time to make your donations to food pantries and programs as well. Hey gardeners – grow an extra row and donate fress vegetables to local food programs.
There are many ways that we can make sure that no one goes hungry.
For more information about donations, go to: https://give.oregonfoodbank.org/give/287613/#!/donation/checkout
For the Oregon Food Bank foodfinder: http://oregonfoodfinder.org/
While Tillamook County, Oregon might be famous for its cheese, many of its residents struggle with food insecurity. The issue is especially acute in the summer when kids are out of school.
Levi Johnson is the Tillamook branch operations lead for Oregon Food Bank. He said the breakfasts and lunches some students receive at school can be the only meals they get all day. His organization is working to fill in those hunger gaps during the summer.
“We work with certain programs in our community,” said Johnson. “We call them summer feeding programs, where they’re trying to set up distribution locations to provide free lunch to those students to help fill in that gap and that need to find a meal to get them through the day.”
Food insecurity levels in Tillamook County are higher than the state average – at nearly 12% compared to about 10%, according to the Oregon Hunger Task Force.
Food insecurity is even higher for kids in the county, at 19%.
The county is home to about 27,000 people. Johnson said the biggest barrier for residents is distance, because of Tillamook’s rural nature.
“We have a lot of areas where to get to the nearest emergency food box site, or even a meal site, they could be looking at a 30 minute drive alone,” said Johnson. “Let alone a lot of folks that we serve don’t have that kind of transportation. So, they’re either having to walk or bike.”
Johnson noted that people can find local food sites at Oregonfoodfinder.org, which is available in 19 languages.
He said the biggest challenge for food sites in Tillamook County is the need for more volunteers.
“A lot of programs we’ve seen in the past few years close just because they’re just not seeing the volunteers coming in to help them,” said Johnson, “and so we’re trying our best to get more people involved.”
