PANAMA CITY, Fla. (WJHG/WECP) – Even though food is necessary to live, it is often a luxury for some. On the east side of Bay County, food insecurity is a major problem, with over 80% of students at Parker Elementary School struggling with this, according to the principal.
“This is a food desert, we don’t have a grocery store in this area, so we’ve seen that need. COVID took the covers off that need a bit more, so since COVID we’ve been serving quite a few folks,” said Donna Pilsen, Executive Director of Rebuild Bay County.
Because of that need, Rebuild Bay in partnership with the Children’s Home Society of Florida has placed Bay County’s first refrigerated food lockers in Parker Elementary School. These contain bags full of food such as frozen meat, canned goods, dairy, eggs, and more products able to feed a family for up to one week.
Lockers are open 24 hours, so individuals can access food at their convenience, facilitating food pick-up for people who have a busy schedule.
The process to get a bag of food is to first, scan a QR code on flyers hung around the community which will then take you to a website to fill out a form in order to get connected. Next, the family and community engagement representative will contact you and ask about your family size and need for food.
“Once they get the QR code, they would come up to this machine a then slide across here. And then it would ask for either a PIN or the bar code, and it comes to them in an email, and they can easily take the QR code and then scan it right here,” said a school representative.
“This is not just a handout, it is a hand up, because once a family engages with us, we teach them how to sustain their families by applying for food stamps, Medicaid, all the things. We start with one thing, and we move forward by sustaining the whole family,” said Sharis Robinson, Senior Director for the Northwest Region of Community Partnership Schools.
‘No Kid Hungry’ provided a grant to purchase the food lockers and Rebuild Bay as well as other local businesses are donating food to fill the lockers twice a day.
“It brings me nothing but pride and joy to see us working together to not only combat hunger but to see achievement for our kids because we know they deserve a great education and they deserve the best in the world,” said JoBeth Davis, the Principal of Parker Elementary School.
Rebuild Bay is considering Rutherford High School and A.D. Harris Learning Village as potential future locations for new food lockers.
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