Valdosta, GA |

Holidays are always a busy time of year around The Second Harvest Food Bank of South Georgia. However, this year, thanks to Hurricane Helene, things are kicked up into overdrive, as they also look to help those families rebuilding after the storm.

“Thirteen of our twenty-six counties were affected by the storm. So, we have been doing our kids café program, which is children’s meals. We have been doing our mobile pantry program. We’ve been doing our large pods, which are points of distribution, which are large scale drive thru distributions and we have been working with our partner agencies as well as the EMA’s in most of these communities to put resources on the ground as they’re needed,” says Eliza McCall with Second Harvest Food Bank of South Georgia.

So far, this food bank has provided more than two million meals worth of food and nearly a million bottles of water to those in need. And that’s all thanks to an increase in donations both big and small.

“We have been seeing help come from locally and we have been seeing a great response nationwide from food vendors and from retailers and from businesses and individuals and congregations,” says McCall.

It’s not just food and water that have seen an increase, but also volunteers. Because of that rise in manpower, they are now able to extend their help far and wide.

“We have been building disaster boxes not only for South Georgia, but also for other Hurricane Helene affected areas. So, Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee for other food banks, other Feeding America food banks. And so, the people of South Georgia have been wonderful about coming in and helping us build boxes or showing up at our events and helping us hand out those boxes or other items once they’re built,” says McCall.

That also includes the farming community. While they might now have extra produce to donate due to the crop damage following Helene, they are finding other ways to help out the community.

“Right now, they’ve not been able to do much because they’ve all been so heavily affected. And I know that they want to do more, but they just can’t. But we have seen them volunteer. We’ve seen situations where they’ve called and said what can I do? What can my family do to help you get resources out in say, Clinch County, in Homerville? And so, we’ve been able to use folks as volunteers or as points of contact,” says McCall.

Even though this recent surge has been beneficial in helping those affected in the short term, it’s important to remember, this is just the start of a long rebuilding process.

“We have in this area, been hit by three name storms in a thirteen-month period. And so, now we have a whole bunch of people who were not food insecure before, who now are, on top of the one in six people who are on a normal basis or who experience it from time to time. So, this is going to be a process that’s going to take twelve, eighteen, twenty-four months for South Georgia to get over,” says McCall.

By: Damon Jones