Organizations join forces to help provide food for needy

Five organizations are joining together to provide food distribution once a month at the parking lot of the Kansas City Kansas Community College Dr. Thomas Burke Technical Education Center at 6565 State Ave.

The free food distribution takes place at noon on the fourth Monday of each month at 65th and State in Kansas City, Kansas. The next one will be Aug. 23.

Joining together in the effort to sponsor the food distribution are Harvesters, Humana, Kansas City Kansas Community College, Providence Medical Center and Providence YMCA-Ball Family Center.

Matt Eaves, executive director of Providence YMCA-Ball Family Center, said this group effort started when Cassandra Long of Humana came onto the YMCA Community Mission Board. They were discussing and determining community needs, especially during the pandemic. Child care and food distribution rose to the top of the list of needs, he said.

The conversations about how to help the community started before the pandemic, he added. Once everything reopened, they continued the effort for food distribution.

They started with a food distribution in late June and continued in late July, he said. Harvesters is providing the food, while the participating organizations have been providing the volunteers, he said.

The word is starting to spread throughout the community about the food distribution, he said. The location is good, with a lot of room in the parking lot to distribute food.

He said they would like to get some other businesses in the community involved to come out and volunteer.

“We are proud to partner with these other community organizations in providing free nutritious food to individuals and families in our area,” said Karen Orr, chief executive officer of Providence Medical Center. “Addressing food insecurity and hunger in our community will have lifelong impacts to overall health and well-being.”

Cassandra Long, population health strategy lead for Humana, said she has worked with other food distribution programs previously in the Kansas City area.

She was asked to get involved in the effort here, she said. Providence Medical Center had a couple primary care locations in Kansas City, Kansas, and Bonner Springs, and they were screening patients on social determinants for health, asking them if they had enough food to eat. They found a lot of responses that people did not have enough to eat, she said.

Providence came to Humana to help with a food distribution program, because they know Humana does food distributions in other areas of the city, she said. They worked with the YMCA as one of the nonprofit sponsors and with Harvesters, a regional food bank, as the food source. KCKCC came to the table, as its parking lot was so big, and able to handle the traffic.

It was largely a community collaborative effort, Long added. They knew intuitively there was a problem, as Providence was hearing about it from patients and the YMCA was hearing from members.

With the two events they’ve had so far, they ran out of food both times, Long said. There were over 100 families served in June and 125 families in July, she added.

The line was still pretty long when they ran out of food in late July, so they plan to order more food for the Aug. 23 distribution, she added. Cars had lined up 45 minutes before the second event started, and they ran out of food before the end of the line, she said.

“That speaks to a need,” she added.

Long said everyone is welcome to come to the food distribution. They don’t have to show identification, and there is no proof of need. People will be asked how many are in their household, if they are over 18 or over 65, and what is their Zip Code, she added. They are not asked what their income level is.

Need is currently everywhere, she said, and they are seeing more people in need in Kansas City, Kansas, Bonner Springs and Edwardsville.

“It doesn’t matter where they live, anybody is welcome to come,” she said.