Addressing Food Insecurity During & After Covid-19:

Grassroots Organizers, Technology, & Data

Wake County Impact Report 2020 - 2023

With the COVID-19 pandemic raging in the US in 2020, families were left unemployed and uncertain about where their next meals were coming from.

The NC Cooperative Extension - Wake County Center and Wake County Human Services mobilized community partners to continue emergency food distribution to families affected by COVID-19 through Community Food Hubs & school meals for children.

Update: Food distribution to address food security has continued past Emergency Relief, and this report shows includes all distribution numbers 2020- 2023.

Freshspire aided hubs in food purchasing, and tracked the impact of this program. This report goes over the results. Read more about the initiative here.

*Data included in this report was funded fully or in part utilizing CARES and ARPA county funding for COVID-19 Emergency and after.

We tracked impact in every corner of Wake County.

14 Community Food Hubs were set up as food pick-up locations. These hubs also organized delivery of meals to specific neighborhoods and sites to directly reach families.

Below, we’ve mapped out how many meals were distributed throughout Wake County. The colors of the markers represent the Community Partner that distributed the meals and the sizes visually represent the quantity of meals distributed at that location. If you click on the marker, you can view the number and the Partner name.

We tracked the meals distributed over time at each location.

To the right, you can view the number of meals distributed per month throughout this program. The impact grew as the program continued. We tracked meals distributed per site, family size and demographics, and purchases as well.

Process & People

Wake County allocated funding in order to do the following:

• Develop and Launch Community Food Hubs in Food Insecure Areas

• Enhance Food Resources for Target Populations

• Increase Purchasing Power and Storage Capacity for Pantries and Food Banks

Community partners including churches/non-profits as hub locations, food suppliers, and a technology provider were chosen.

This is how it played out:

The chosen Hubs use the Freshspire technology as the platform to order the food they need for the coming weeks, from suppliers of their choice. Each hub was allocated “food boxes” assembled by the Food Bank of Central and Eastern NC and Interfaith Food Shuttle, which included necessary dry goods and shelf-stable items. Hubs purchased or had donated fresh produce, meats, groceries, and cooked meals from other suppliers in the network.

The hubs distributed these food items in the form of multiple boxes and bags by either “pick-up” or “delivery”.

Pick-up:

On distribution days, cars lined up at the hubs to collect their fresh food for their families. Once the car pulled up to the loading site, the driver would open his/her trunk to which volunteers directly loaded the boxes and bags. Many locations gave families choices for meats and other emergency items. The amount of food distributed to each family was based on family-size.

Delivery:

Each hub organized volunteers to delivery food boxes and bags to specific locations and neighborhoods, to ensure families that were not able to make it to a pick-up location were also fed. These locations were chosen by the hubs, based on the community’s they were in.

Throughout this process, Hubs tracked the food they distributed on Freshspire, reporting how many meals they gave out, to whom (family demographics - no names/specific identities), and where. This allowed for full-transparency in this program. Freshspire generated reports on purchasing and food distribution, being able to accurately show the impact that was created.

The People and Organizations Involved

The people involved in this COVID-Relief program worked tirelessly to ensure our community was fed with nutritious meals throughout the pandemic.

Wake County Human Services & NC Cooperative Extension - Wake County Center

These centers brought all partners together to put this COVID-Relief program into play. They chose the partners, facilitated relationships, and distributed funds.

Food Hubs & Other Partners

These are the organizations that either set-up their locations as food pick-up centers and/or delivered food to their communities. They ordered the food they needed, managed logistics, organized volunteers, and made sure the program ran smoothly.

Food Suppliers

These non-profit organizations and companies served as food supplier to the Hubs, by selling and/or donating food as the Hubs needed. The sold produce boxes, meat cuts, individual bulk items, and more.

About the Technology

Freshspire served three purposes in this program:

1. Allowing Hubs to reliably purchase food from suppliers on the platform.

2. Enabling the tracking of food distribution, so that hyper-local data could be collected.

3. Reporting the impact of the program monthly, with numbers and visuals to present the impact of this COVID-relief program.

Freshspire’s technology provides users with vendor management, order management, and data analytics for wholesale food buyers/suppliers. The company provides secure software infrastructure accessible on web & mobile devices. In addition, the company offering data reporting and consulting.

Gallery

Here are some photos from Hub sites on their distribution days.

Questions or want to learn more? Email us at info@getfreshspired.com!