Negaunee students hand out, and help out local families from around the community at the moblie food pantry in May Negaunee High School. Feeding America West Michigan Food Bank provided 15,000 pounds of food which could feed around 300 families. (Journal photo by Elizabeth Bailey)

By VICKIE FEE

Journal Staff Writer

ISHPEMING — A Feeding America food distribution event will be held on Thursday, May 2, at the NorthIron Church parking lot in Ishpeming.

The drive-through pickup will run from 8:30 until 10 a.m. For those who do not have a vehicle, a truck will be on hand at the VFW parking lot from 9 to 10 a.m.

Feeding America West Michigan is part of Feeding America, a national network of 200 food banks, food pantries and 60,000 meal programs of community-based organizations in the U.S. working to end hunger.

Feeding America’s website states its goal is to create a world where “people can access food without judgment or stigma.”

Some of Feeding America’s programs, in partnership with government food assistance programs, have income means standards, but most of its distribution programs, including the event coming up in Ishpeming, do not require proof of income.

The food pantry in Ishpeming had closed in 2014, but an area resident stepped in to host a mobile food pantry in its place to keep food distribution service available to her local neighbors in need.

Annie Trudell has been the site coordinator at Ishpeming for nine years. It continued to run as scheduled all through COVID. Trudell and her volunteers have served 286 households on average each month, sometimes serving as many as 386 households.

Trudell has nothing but praise for her dedicated volunteers, who show up before 7 a.m. to unload trucks.

“We have seven to eight tons of food, but it goes so fast,” she said. “We’ll have 400 pounds of plums and we’re putting six plums in this box, six in the next. We get an assembly line going.

“Our regular volunteers include the VFW, four churches, Gauthier Insurance (and) Honor National; Bank. Honor Bank lets their people off to come help and they get paid while they’re volunteering. Students from Ishpeming High School come over and load the boxes into people’s cars. It’s just wonderful.”

One of Trudell’s favorite memories with food distribution events was when a young mother pulled up and said it was her first time there and asked how it worked. She said she was so glad to be able to come.

“Today is my son’s birthday, and to be honest I didn’t have a lot to give him for his birthday,” the mom said. The child looked 5 or 6.

Trudell and another volunteer went and looked through a box of frozen bakery goods from Meijer’s.

“There was a decorated birthday cake in there! The look on that little boy’s face made my day,” Trudell said.

Since 1981, Feeding America West Michigan has serviced a 40-county area, including western Michigan downstate and the entire Upper Peninsula.

In 2021, FAWM reclaimed millions of meals’ worth of safe, surplus food. With the help of countless volunteers, the food banks sort, store and distribute the food through a network of hundreds of hunger-relief partners to “fill neighbors plates instead of landfills,” according to the website at www.feedwm.org.

One in nine people in the West Michigan/U.P. area is at risk of hunger; the number is one in eight for children. In Michigan, 33.8% of households that receive SNAP benefits, formerly known as food stamps, include children. In 2021, FAWM provided 24.6 million pounds of food, equaling 20.5 million meals. The national network of Feeding America distributed 5.3 billion meals in 2023.

The population of the 40-county area served by FAWM is 2.5 million. The poverty rate is 11.4%, while the food insecurity rate is 12.1%. The number of meals distributed by FAWM in 2022 was 19.9 million.

Vickie Fee can be reached at 906-228-2500, ext. 242. Her email address is vfee@miningjournal.net