BYRON – Northern Illinois Food Bank’s Mobile Pantry Program provides food distribution to under-served areas, where there is little access to food assistance.
Byron High School Key Club and Byron Kiwanis are partnering with the Northern Illinois Food Bank to help hungry families in Ogle County on Saturday, March 16. We are hosting a Mobile Food Pantry distribution from 10 a.m.-noon at the Byron Community Schools transportation lot (510 W. 7th St., Byron).
The Mobile Pantry truck has nine bays, six of which are refrigerated, and can hold up to 9,000 pounds of food. Every distribution includes frozen meat, a valuable source of protein, fresh produce, bread, and nutritious non-perishable items, as well as cleaning items when available. At each visit, about twenty volunteers unload food from the bays and organize them on tables around the truck.
Clients from the community sign in and walk around the truck to select food that best meets their family’s nutritional needs. Each Mobile Pantry distribution visit lasts two hours and can provide nutritious food to as many as 300 families.
Generally Mobile Food Pantry “sponsors” pay a fee that is approximately half the cost of the visit and the remainder is subsidized by the Food Bank from donations from corporations and foundations. The Northern IL Food Bank is allowing the Byron Key Club to host without a financial sponsorship.
The Mobile Pantry program provides a dependable, efficient way to increase protein and other nutritious foods in the diets of low-income people needing food assistance.
