There's a lot of people experiencing food insecurity.

The need is growing.

There's more people looking for assistance with food.

Everyone is concerned, especially local organizations, nonprofits.

It's more people than you would think, and it's different types of people than you would think.

Everybody is, you know, a step or two away from becoming food insecure themselves.

We have seen a jump in numbers of people that are needing food and needing resources to be able to, you know, get food.

Food is a basic need and a right for everybody.

There is no one that deserves to be hungry.

[GENTLE MUSIC] JORDAN BROWNING: Kind of the ballpark we're looking at for our service area is about one in five kids and one in six adults facing hunger.

I think what gets missed with that food insecurity is it may not look like what most people imagine.

So a lot of the folks we are serving, they have jobs.

They have homes.

They're paying rent.

Usually they maybe have one or two kids in the household.

They have a high school education.

They just don't have enough to make it towards the end of the month.

And that's where we're coming in, to make sure that they can have food to supply to their families while they're trying to get back on their feet.

NATALIE BARBIERI: A lot of people think of food insecurity as just not having access to food, period, like enough food.

But no, food insecurity is not having enough access to nutritious food on a regular basis.

Like, you may have all the ramen you want to eat in the world.

But that doesn't supply your body with everything that it needs.

LANEY TATRO: It is something that we have seen systemically over the years, that we continue to have more and more and more of our citizens in our country facing food insecurity.

Oftentimes, the people that make decisions about these things are people who have not experienced what it feels like to be hungry or to be food insecure.

And so it's very difficult to make those decisions and make decisions that matter and affect an entire nation of people if that's not something that you've experienced personally.

JORDAN BROWNING: A lot of the misperceptions, I think, that folks have for those struggling with food insecurity is that they're somehow taking benefits from someone else, or folks choose to be in this situation, which are just fundamentally not true.

And a lot of the folks really don't need assistance for that long.

I mean, example, with the SNAP program, most people are only on that program for nine months or less.

And I think that's a really good communication that folks are using this as a temporary assistance to get back on their feet.

What we see is people coming in and out of this situation, depending on where they are at in their life.

Everyone deserves to eat.

And we're all so close to being in that place.

We're one paycheck, one sickness, one car issue away from having to decide between am I going to feed myself and my children, or am I going to do this other thing, you know?

JORDAN BROWNING: Just in our last fiscal year, we distributed 21 million meals over our entire service area.

But unfortunately, that communicates the increased need that we're seeing in our community.

And we see that across the board with-- things fluctuate.

So we are the Feeding America Food Bank for Southwest Missouri.

So what that means is we serve a 28-county service area made up of about 270 different charities.

And our mission is to transform hunger into hope.

And we do that by being a distribution center for all those agencies.

So that way, all they have to worry about is, how are we going to get food and get that out to families in need, and we take care of the rest.

So that involves more than 15 trucks going out daily to make sure that we're able to service these pantries.

Ozarks Food Harvest is one of our greatest partners.

And so seeing them step up to fill that need for their smaller agencies just means everything.

When we got the federal funding cuts earlier this year, we lost about $300,000 of funding.

And so seeing them be able to step in to try to fill some of that gap for agencies like us is-- it's very crucial.

JORDAN BROWNING: It's 270 different charities we're working with.

And we would not be able to do the work we do without partners like that, because they are the boots on the ground of distributing this out to families in need.

And so it takes an entire community and not only the agencies we work with but our incredibly generous local grocer donors that are supplying us that food as well as our volunteers.

I mean, as part of our distribution, we're sorting about 100,000 pounds of food per week just to make sure it gets out the door in a timely fashion.

And without volunteers to help us do that, we'd probably have to hire about 15 full-time employees to help us cover that.

So there's so many different aspects to this food distribution game that requires so many people in the community to work together to feed people.

MARY MAGNUS: Volunteering here is easy because there are so many different ways to volunteer.

There are lots of times.

It's easy to sign on.

And it's only three hours out of your day or three hours out of your week.

It's not hard.

They've served so many people in such a broad area.

It's not something you can do on your own.

You have to have a big network to do this.

Many hands make light work.

JORDAN BROWNING: On a monthly basis, we're serving around, on average, about 70,000 individuals each and every month.

And so that's across our entire 28-county service area.

We can take $1 and turn that into $10 worth of groceries.

And the way we can do that is because we have this massive, 100,000-square-foot warehouse.

Not only are we able to purchase food much more efficiently, but we're able to distribute it much, much more efficiently than the average person can.

So many are so grateful that this is one less trade-off choice that they have to make.

Because there's so many different systemic issues that need to be addressed when people are struggling with finances and things like that, that we're tackling this need of food to make sure that that person can either fix their car or they can keep their utilities on.

They can feed their kids dinner tonight.

And so, so much about what we do here is allowing people to not have to worry about food in their lives.

KEVIN PRATHER: Our vision is a community where everyone has access to local, healthy food.

And this seemed like a very direct way to make that happen.

My name is Kevin Prather, and I am the farmer educator for Springfield Community Gardens.

But today, I'm filling in for the director of food hub operations.

Under the local food purchase agreement, we are buying food from local farms all throughout Southwest Missouri and Northwest Arkansas.

And then we were distributing those to free fridges in our local community for people.

We buy a lot of things, and not just produce.

But as far as produce goes, we're talking tomatoes, squash, eggplant, lots of herbs, culinary herbs, lettuce mixes, spinach, things like that.

It's a "take what you need" situation when there's items in the fridge.

Things have been increasing.

And now with SNAP benefits being cut, I've noticed the foot traffic here increasing.

And I've noticed people walking away without anything.

It's more people than you would think, and it's different types of people than you would think.

Everybody is, you know, a step or two away from becoming food insecure themselves.

We have three fridges in Springfield, Missouri, one at the Carnegie Library, one at the library station, and then one here at the Fairbanks campus.

GINA MARIE WALDEN: Our goal with the Springfield-Greene County Library is to connect people with resources and materials that they need.

And that's what we continue to do.

The need is growing.

There's more people looking for assistance with food.

I feel like everyone is concerned, especially local organizations and nonprofits, because everyone just wants to help.

And so one of the great things about Springfield, our community, is that we care for each other.

We care for our family, our friends, our neighbors.

And now is the time I feel like our Springfield community gardens and other local nonprofits are ringing the bell to come and help.

Everyone needs to help.

If you can help, please do.

The main purpose of our fridge program with the Springfield-Greene County Library is exposure and education.

But it's done so much more.

It also helps create community.

We've seen folks standing out here who have never met each other.

And then they start talking and swapping recipes and asking, what are you going to do with your food?

And so it's really nice.

It builds community too.

KEVIN PRATHER: We're doing our best to secure funding.

But right now, things are pretty difficult.

We have lost the federal grants that allowed us to spend that money on local farmers for the local community.

There's been times now where our fridge is totally empty.

And we have patrons asking us when we're going to get more food.

We don't know.

Everyone's just doing their best.

KEVIN PRATHER: Helping people have access to food is sort of an end in its own right, even if we're not fundamentally solving the food system issue.

Having full bellies, at the end of the day, is its own end, in my opinion.

RACHAEL WEST: Springfield Community Gardens, our mission is healthy, local food for all.

We do a lot of mission with either helping, like, local farms, connecting them with buyers, helping people learn how to grow food, as well as where we're at right now is the food distribution, where we partner with Ozarks Food Harvest.

So pretty much anything to do with getting food into the hands of our community is where we're at.

The Weller Produce Distribution has been going on since 2014.

There isn't cold storage available once they pull it out of the grocery stores to hold it somewhere.

And so we figured out a way to network neighbors to meeting on a weekly basis, so that the second that that food comes off at Ozarks Food Harvest on the truck, we're able to deliver it the same day here to neighbors through the distribution.

The volunteers that come together to be able to disperse everything out-- everything is gathered in crate-sized boxes.

And some of it's mixed-- oranges, lettuce.

And so we separate everything out before putting it into boxes for everyone.

There are 25 to 30 volunteers, depending on the day here.

We serve at least 115 families on a weekly basis.

We don't require anybody to register here.

So whether you're on the cusp, whether you're just in between that month on bills, there's no needing to prove income or anything.

If you just need food, you can come through a distribution line and get food.

One thing that I really like about this is that this food would have gone into a landfill.

And so not only are you getting apples and oranges and bananas, but you're able to divert things that were just going to be composted anyway.

And when we think about food waste or food insecurity, we actually have an abundance.

We have enough food.

There just isn't the mechanism to handing it to people.

And so we need more volunteers and people like that that are willing to be on the ground to disperse the food, because sometimes it's just the manpower behind to get it into hands of people.

JORDAN BROWNING: I can say for us, on average, yearly, we're saving about 400 truckloads that would have gone to the landfill.

RACHAEL WEST: Ozarks Food Harvest gathers from all of our local grocery stores almost on a daily basis.

With our retail pickup program, we've seen that go from only collecting about 500,000 pounds a year to last year, I believe we collected more than 7 million pounds of that, just strictly from grocery stores.

This food can have a second life.

And it can go to a family in need and really improve their situation.

RACHAEL WEST: They are incredible.

They not only disperse to us, but there are dozens of other charities that pick up from them.

Even when we're there getting our produce, there are other trucks getting loaded up.

I have been around since 2017 with the gardens, and so I've seen us grow from having a community garden, four community gardens, to where now there are 17 community gardens and two farms.

But the need is the same.

It's just connecting people with local food.

So with our community gardens, they can come, and they can volunteer and have a share.

With the distribution-- a lot of the produce that is grown here at this garden, they also get put into the distribution.

So it's not just Ozarks Food Harvest.

We have community members that if they have an abundance of cucumbers in season, they can drop those off on Saturday with us and still be able to either put them in the free community refrigerators or the Weller distribution.

Making people happy and fed-- that's it.

That's all our goal is.

ANGELA HUDSON: So our mission is to alleviate food insecurity by providing food here in Christian County and additionally providing resources and education to help our neighbors in need.

This is a self-select pantry.

But we do do it by appointment.

So tonight, we are hosting our annual Thanksgiving meal packing event.

We have anywhere from 200 to 300 volunteers that show up for our annual packing events.

And we are tonight packaging 1,600 Thanksgiving meals.

You're going to grab your bag.

You're going to walk from station to station, grab the item that's needed, and fill the bag.

And then we're going to collect all those bags and distribute them during the month of November, when they come and pick up their normal monthly cart of groceries.

It is a variety of people that need our services, right now especially.

And so there's no one specific way to describe who actually comes and gets our food.

It's really whoever is in need.

Just to give you an idea of the impact that we have made, we have served almost 43,000 mouth with food.

And 2 million pounds of food has gone out the door.

So in Christian County right now, we have over 6,000 people that are receiving SNAP benefits and 12% that are living in poverty.

Right now, we can do a cart-load of groceries.

And I don't just mean a cartful.

I mean a really large cart full of groceries for only $64.

We are actually packing Thanksgiving meals.

We are also packing meals for Christmas.

And each one of those holiday meals is-- we can feed a family for only $30.

So what we really need is those people to give and donate, because our dollar can go a lot further than their dollar can go if they were going to the grocery store and buying these same foods to donate.

And that will help us meet more needs of these families in such a great way this holiday season.

ALEX JOHNSON: The Bear Pantry opened its doors in spring of 2019.

We were seeing at that time that close to 36% of students at four-year institutions were facing food insecurity or didn't have consistent access to healthy foods.

And so we started brainstorming ways that we at Missouri State could start to provide some of that access to basic needs.

Logistically, our main goal is to get food in the hands of people who need it.

And so we have this great partnership with Ozarks Food Harvest and have had that for the last few years now.

They've been an amazing resource for us.

We run a client-choice-model food pantry.

So folks come in to the space just like they would a grocery store or convenience store and choose items that they need.

So by client choice, I mean that we want to respect the dignity of folks who are coming in to utilize the pantry to make food decisions based on their own dietary needs or family size or preferences.

And so instead of prebagging items or prepackaging items and potentially assuming what people might want to eat, we open up the space and let them take what they will need and will eat.

Yeah, it also helps us to reduce food waste as well.

When we developed the Bear Pantry, we wanted to create as few barriers as possible to access for folks.

And what we were seeing in the literature was that students can associate negative stigma to utilizing something like a food pantry.

So we want to make it as open as possible so folks feel comfortable utilizing the space.

A lot of students are here in this brand-new environment, and everybody's coming in from different walks of life.

And so I think that sometimes students might not want to be seen needing additional assistance.

And what we're doing a lot of is trying to communicate with students that we're here at the university.

Faculty, staff are here to support you in your journey.

I think my nutrition knowledge has prepared me well for a role like this.

So making sure that the things that I'm ordering each week are balanced, that people will get a consistent source of protein or whole grains or fresh produce.

That's something we really try to do in ordering.

And when receiving donations, what you're asking for in donation drives kind of hits all of those major nutrients so that we can not only address the quantity of food people are getting but also the quality of it.

One thing I love about this job is being able to have that interaction with students who are impacted by it each week.

One thing that is surprising to some people is that, like, all students come to use the pantry.

There is no one type of person that comes to use the pantry.

It's like so many people come and utilize it because they need it.

There have been several people that have just thanked me or have been like, thank you so much for what you're doing with the Bear Pantry.

Like, this is my food for the week, and I couldn't live without it.

Seeing and hearing people come and pick up food and also just speak about how much it helps them out is-- yeah, it's huge.

And it's eye-opening too.

NANDA NUNNELLY: It started as the Negro Service Council back in 1946.

As most people know, in that time, there was segregation in this part of the country.

It came as a way for Black people in this area to have the ability to socialize outside of church.

Minnie Hackney was the executive director.

She started in 1947, and she continued all the way through the mid '80s as the director of the Negro Service council.

We, at that time, brought it before the members to name it after Minnie Hackney to do business as the Minnie Hackney Community Service Center as a way to honor her and what she did for the center.

We offer a weekly meal here on the weekends.

And we offer a place-- if people are needing food, they can contact us.

We'll be able to get together some type of food or resources for them to get food to take home with them.

Our charter goes back to helping indigent people in whatever way we can.

We have seen a jump in numbers of people that are needing food and needing resources to be able to get food.

That's part of the reason why we provide this, you know, meal on Saturdays.

But we also send people home with a meal.

I say often that we are community blessed, community built, and it truly is that.

This place here is a part of this community.

And I don't know.

The only way that it continues to do what we do is by the community blessing us, by stepping up and being a part of it.

LANEY TATRO: Christian Action Ministries is a food pantry that has been in existence since 1984, serving to combat food insecurity here in Stone and Taney Counties.

We were founded by 11 churches in our area when they came together to meet a common need, which is where the name Christian Action Ministries came from.

And here, 41 years later, we are much more than just a food pantry.

We use food as a tool to minister to those in need.

So we are not just filling bellies.

We are filling hearts with hope as well.

We serve about 7,500 individuals per month.

We were very excited to switch over to the choice model in November of last year.

The response is tremendous.

It puts the dignity back into choosing what you bring home.

It puts dignity into coming to the food pantry.

We will always have non-perishable items, those commodity items that you traditionally think of when you think of a food pantry.

But we also will have specific breakfast items.

We have eggs for every neighbor that comes through our door.

We provide dairy items.

We also provide them with meat, so not just that canned non-perishable meat.

But we also have freezers where they can choose that meat that they get to take home.

We provide fresh produce for our neighbors as well.

And we provide household items like paper goods.

We also are a diaper bank for our neighbors here, so we provide diapers for them as well.

In rural areas, our economy is just smaller.

Simply, we have less job opportunity.

We have less access to health care, to transportation, to all of these other resources that our neighbors oftentimes need.

And so because of these barriers, it oftentimes is difficult for us to obtain things like funding for our neighbors.

It is hard to get grants, whether that is federally or statewide.

It is difficult to have our neighbors supporting us financially because they are struggling themselves.

So we just oftentimes can have less opportunity.

But something that we oftentimes are excited about is that because we have that smaller community, it means a lot more and the impact is a lot greater.

We are blessed to have a team of volunteers.

We have about 400 volunteers spread about Christian Action Ministries.

And we have nine staff members who work tirelessly so that we can continue to meet that need.

STACY NORRIS: The best part, first off, is just the staff here, to see their commitment to just helping and loving people.

And it may be just help for a month, two months.

The reward is when those people and clients come back in and bring donations.

Because now they are in a place in their life where they can take care of themselves.

Success, to us, is personal relationships.

It is bringing the community back together in a way that we have not seen in many years.

Food insecurity is quite high in our area.

We are somewhere around 17% of our population is food insecure, which is higher than the state average and the national average.

It oftentimes is misconstrued that our neighbors are here for a handout and not a hand-up.

And what our job is is to build those neighbors up.

We want to teach them how to be independent and self-sustainable, while also providing them with hope, with groceries, and with care that someone is there for them.

JORDAN BROWNING: We can always recommend volunteering, because that's 100,000 pounds of food we're sorting per week that we desperately need people's help to make sure it is getting out the door as quickly as possible.

MARY MAGNUS: At first I did it just to stay busy.

And now it feels like I'm putting some good out into the world.

It's the one little good thing I can do to hopefully make the world a better place.

I didn't realize, probably, that there were times that there was not enough.

To be able to give back, to just help that single mom, help that single dad, help grandparents that have taken in their grandchildren is very humbling to be able to do.

I'm just, on a daily basis, just revived with humanity because it's hard sometimes to see some of the things that are happening in the world.

But then to know every single Saturday you've got folks here that are coming in and just serving their community, it really is-- it really is amazing.

JORDAN BROWNING: Getting people in touch with their food system to see, hey, what's going on in our community and knowing how much local grocers, individual donations farmers are contributing to help feed people in Southwest Missouri-- I mean, because it's incredible work.

And it truly takes a community to make this happen of so many people involved to make sure people stay fed.

LANEY TATRO: Food insecurity is a lack of having your basic needs met.

Food is a basic need and a right for everybody.

There is no one that deserves to be hungry.

I grew up with a single mother who was trying to feed both of her children, who-- she was food insecure so that we would not be.

And that looks like skipping meals so that your children can eat.

That looks like your children only being able to eat meals when they are at school and places that they have that provided for them.

For our seniors, that means going to the senior center to get a free meal because they don't have those groceries in their houses.

And a lot of times, especially in today's society, food insecurity is also met with pride.

And you try to carry yourself in a way that you don't want people to know that you are food insecure.

And so a lot of times, we don't know who is food insecure because they are really good at keeping that mask on.

JORDAN BROWNING: So often we see folks that get into such dire straits before they ask for assistance.

And I think what we've seen time and time again is that our community is so very, very generous and so willing to help out their neighbors.

And I don't feel like that's seen enough, that people really do care about each other here in Southwest Missouri.

And unfortunately, the loudest voices tend to be those that are pushing against people that are trying to get help and trying to get back on their feet.

KEVIN PRATHER: Being a farmer, my primary goal in life is to feed people.

And so even though I'm not the one growing this food that's coming from these other farmers, it's really amazing to have a hand in it.

I'm thankful to be able to be a part of this system that's helping people get fed.

So it it's really uplifting.

NATALIE BARBIERI: Just having the experience with a food pantry and seeing its impact on people's lives each week, I think I'll always carry with me.

Before I stepped into this job, I didn't understand the impact it was having.

I didn't really understand how many people actually go through hard times.

Experiencing the amount of people that are impacted by what we're doing here has really opened my eyes to the importance of this kind of work.

RACHAEL WEST: Having a community that comes together is the highest of value.

And knowing that they're connecting with food, I think, is so very important.

That we have-- and sometimes in our hearts, we feel like we've lost a lot of humanity.

And seeing a group of 30 neighbors come together just to disperse food for free to other humans just because they deserve it because they're humans is a really beautiful thing.

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