Mobile Pantry Helps Bridge The Food Gap In Idaho Towns
- March 19th, 2013
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By Samantha Wright
BSU Public Radio
It’s still dark outside when Chico McKinney drives away from the Idaho Foodbank in Boise with nearly 8,000 pounds of food. “Of course this is Idaho, we have a wide variety of potatoes, we have some frozen French fries, some dehydrated mashed potatoes and some dehydrated hash browns…”
Plus cheese, bread, frozen meat, and peanut butter. All of this is for Weiser’s first Mobile Food Pantry. “A mobile pantry is when we drop off food and distribute it directly out of the truck in communities that don’t have an actual brick and mortar pantry.”
Usually the Foodbank delivers food to permanent pantries, that turn around and give it to those in need. But in 30 communities, there’s no group on the ground with the facilities to store food. As the Foodbank’s Agency Relations Specialist, part of McKinney’s job is to change that. The mobile pantry is the first step.
In Washington County, where Weiser is located, there’s an estimated 1,700 people who can’t meet their food needs.
Read or listen to the rest of the story and see more photos at http://www.boisestatepublicradio.org/post/mobile-pantry-helps-bridge-food-gap-idaho-towns.
Click on photos to enlarge.






