The coronavirus pandemic is making it much harder for people in America to get a meal.
From students who rely on free and reduced meals in schools (and whose schools are now closed), to senior citizens who are staying indoors, making it hard for them to buy groceries, to service workers who are being laid off and may live paycheck to paycheck already, to single mothers who struggled to afford food pre-coronavirus and now must contend with feeding their children during school closings, the coronavirus is making it difficult for many people to eat.
COVID-19, the official term for the disease caused by the virus, doesn't affect everyone equally and, even before the pandemic, 5.6 million households in the U.S. were experiencing very low food security.
"People who are the most vulnerable, depending on your race, your class, your zip code, and the type of work you do are really the ones that are hit the hardest," said Noreen Springstead, CEO of WhyHunger, which supports grassroots organizations in the U.S. and around the world that are providing food to people. "It [coronavirus] really shows the deeper inequities in our society and those are the people who will be coming en masse to food banks and food pantries."
The virus complicates matters further because it's so widespread.
"This is the equivalent of a Sandy or Katrina happening but not in a few states, but in all states at once, combined with an economic collapse," Joel Berg, CEO of Hunger Free America which helps low-income people sign up for food assistance through the federal programs SNAP and WIC, said.
So, while you're social distancing, here are six organizations you can support that are working to ensure people can eat while the coronavirus rages on. Each nonprofit has a three or four star rating on Charity Navigator, which evaluates charitable organizations in the U.S.
Feeding America
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Feeding America, a network of 200 food banks and 60,000 meal pantries serving over 40 million Americans every year, set up a COVID-19 Response Fund with an initial $2.65 million, a Feeding America spokesperson told Mashable in an email. The fund will help support food banks respond to the pandemic in their communities, including building an inventory of emergency food boxes and distributing them to member food banks across the nation as needed.
If you can make a donation to the fund, it will help Feeding America continue its work to supply its network of food banks around the country with the resources it needs to feed people during the coronavirus crisis. But if you can't, there are still ways you can help. You can raise awareness about the work food banks are doing during this pandemic by re-sharing their social media content. If you're healthy and feel safe doing so, you can volunteer at your local food bank, which are facing a shortage of volunteers across the country. Some food banks are implementing drive-through distributions in hopes of limiting the spread of the virus and equipping volunteers with gloves and hand sanitizer to safeguard their health. To find a food bank near you, you can use Feeding America's food bank locator.
Hunger Free America
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In addition to helping low-income people sign up for food assistance, the national advocacy and direct service organization Hunger Free America runs the National USDA Hunger Hotline, which connects people with emergency food.
Like Feeding America, Hunger Free America also has a coronavirus fund. The money you give will allow the organization to sign up even more Americans for benefits to help them get nutrition assistance. The process to sign up for these benefits, Berg said, can be arduous and his staff assists eligible people (sometimes in multiple languages) and submits the paperwork for them.
Berg believes the Families First Coronavirus Response Act, which President Trump signed into law Wednesday night, is an important tool in the fight against coronavirus, calling it the "most progressive disaster relief bill in modern American history." It provides $500 million in funding for WIC, $400 million to assist local food banks, and temporarily suspends the requirement during the coronavirus crisis that mandates most SNAP beneficiaries must be registered for work. Hunger Free America spoke with congressional staff about the bill, telling them what they thought should be included in it. It also advocated to encourage public support for the bill, published a press release on Monday, calling for the Senate to immediately pass it, and tweeted a video of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer encouraging the same.
Now the organization plans to work with governments to help them roll out the law quickly and efficiently and also help sign up people for these food assistance benefits.
"Our top response to this crisis is to get government to do its job because the most important thing your readers need to understand is all the charity in the world is only going to marginally dent this problem," Berg said.
No Kid Hungry
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No Kid Hungry, a national campaign run by the nonprofit Share Our Strength, which works to end hunger and poverty in the U.S. and abroad, is offering emergency grants to school districts and community organizations during the COVID-19 outbreak. These grants will provide funds to feed kids who are missing out on school meals due to school closures.
In its first granting round, No Kid Hungry will immediately provide $1 million in grants, targeting some of the first places that announced school closures due to coronavirus, including California, Washington, D.C., and Maryland. The organization will continue to fund these grants after it has surpassed the $1 million mark, Lisa Davis, senior vice president of the No Kid Hungry campaign, told Mashable in an email.
Your money will go toward the organization's support of school and community organizations to address child hunger throughout the nation during the COVID-19 crisis, provide funding for the emergency grants, and continue No Kid Hungry's work to ensure communities can support children's access to three healthy meals a day. As needs change, the organization will keep people up to date on its response and ways you can help here.
No Kid Hungry also urged the House to pass the Families First Coronavirus Response Act last week with a statement on its website and provided readers with a call script to help push it through the U.S. senate. Now that the bill is law, No Kid Hungry wants a nationwide increase to SNAP benefits "because we know that in addition to that program being an effective and efficient way to feed children, it’s also shown to be a very effective stimulus to the economy. Most people don’t know that every new SNAP dollar generates up to $1.50 in economic activity, every $1 billion invested in SNAP supports 13,600 jobs," Davis wrote.
WhyHunger
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WhyHunger supports grassroots organizations in the U.S. and globally that are providing food to people but also works on the root causes of hunger from racial inequality to low wages that can act as barriers for people to access food, Springstead, its CEO, told Mashable.
WhyHunger refers people in the U.S. to food pantries, soup kitchens, summer meal sites, government nutrition programs, and grassroots organizations through its national Find Food online database, hotline (1-800-548-6479), and texting service. Its database is home to about 30,000 food agencies in the U.S. Hotline volunteers also refer people to statewide SNAP benefit enrollment (the texting service can't connect people with SNAP benefits). Even during the coronavirus pandemic, the hotline is staffed from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. EDT, Monday through Friday, Springstead said.
WhyHunger set up a Rapid Response Fund to provide immediate economic relief and direct support to the people most impacted by hunger and poverty during the COVID-19 crisis. The money will be used to support food banks and pantries struggling to meet increased demand and adapt distribution to protect their staff and communities they serve, small farmers who are facing lost income due to local markets closing, restaurant and food chain workers who are dealing with economic hardship because of coronavirus, and WhyHunger's Find Food database, texting service, and hotline.
"Our bedrock principle is that we believe nutritious food is the most fundamental human right and having access to it is critical," Springstead said.
Meals on Wheels America
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Meals on Wheels America delivers food to seniors across the country. The organization's website states that almost 9.5 million seniors in the U.S. are threatened by hunger and 7.1 million seniors live in poverty, which means they only have $234 or less to spend each week.
During the pandemic, Meals on Wheels is adjusting how it gets meals to seniors to reduce the chances of person-to-person contact. Volunteers can't enter seniors' homes anymore, a spokesperson for Meals on Wheels wrote in an email to Mashable. In addition to food, visits provide needed socialization that many seniors lack and home-delivered meals can help alleviate seniors' loneliness. This benefit will likely be challenged by coronavirus.
Its COVID-19 Response Fund will help "local communities across the country meet the increased demand for nutritious meals that can keep our seniors safe and healthy," according to the Meals on Wheels website. Funds will also subsidize additional transportation and personnel costs and enable the organization to check in on isolated seniors electronically.
Meals on Wheels is pleased that Congress passed the Families First Coronavirus Response Act, which includes $250 million for programs like Meals on Wheels. The law underscores the importance of this action, stating "nearly two-thirds of recipients of home-delivered meals report these meals as more than half of their food intake for the day.
"As the impact of the coronavirus continues to change and the need for senior nutrition services grows, it’s essential that seniors and the community-based organizations that serve them are represented and protected in future emergency packages that are being considered in Washington. We’re assessing and engaging in that legislative process now," the spokesperson wrote in an email to Mashable.
MAZON: A Jewish Response to Hunger
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MAZON: A Jewish Response to Hunger, a national Jewish organization that mobilizes the Jewish-American community to advocate for anti-hunger policy, focuses on populations that are often overlooked. This include military families, veterans, seniors (especially LGBTQ seniors who face unique food insecurity challenges), college students, rural, and Indigenous communities. MAZON also supports the work of agencies in some of the most food-insecure states to make sure the needs of low-income individuals and families are heard on both the state and local level.
MAZON is directing all of its efforts right now to respond to COVID-19, Josh Protas, MAZON's vice president of public policy, told Mashable in an email. Donations to its COVID-19 response fund will help it fight food insecurity issues experienced by the above groups that have emerged as a result of this pandemic. Additionally, all money collected in its general donation fund will go toward its COVID-19 response. You can learn more about the specific work MAZON is doing during COVID-19 here.
UPDATE: March 20, 2020, 1:26 p.m. EDT The story initially incorrectly stated that donations to MAZON weren't specifically going towards coronavirus efforts. All funds received are going towards its COVID-19 response efforts. The story has been updated to make that clear. Additionally, at the time of publish on Thursday afternoon, MAZON did not have a separate COVID-19 fund. After this story was published, on Thursday evening, it had set one up. The story has been updated with details of this new fund.
Topics Activism Social Good COVID-19
