The Atlanta Community Food Bank will be able to provide more than 1 million additional meals to families in need this holiday season with help from Atlanta-raised singer Ciara and her football player husband, Russell Wilson.
On Tuesday at Saint Peter Missionary Baptist Church in Venetian Hills, Ciara announced that the couple’s nonprofit, the Why Not You Foundation, donated $500,000 to the food bank and Southwest ATL Cares program to help fight food insecurity across the city.
“This is home for me. Atlanta is the city that made me,” she said as volunteers handed out canned goods and produce to families filing into the church.
“No child deserves to go to bed hungry — when you hear the statistics of 1-in-6 kids go to bed hungry every night, that’s a really sad and hard reality,” Ciara said. “And when a child goes to bed hungry, it prohibits them from living their dream.”
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
Pressure on the pocketbooks of working families going into the holidays were heightened by the longest federal government shutdown in U.S. history. The 43-day-long political stalemate upended the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which provides crucial food support for roughly 580,000 metro Atlantans.
Local governments and nonprofits scrambled to fill the gaps — the Atlanta Community Food Bank took $5 million out of its reserves to prepare for the surging demand as the shutdown stretched on.
But the increase in demand didn’t begin with the shutdown. Kyle Waide, CEO of the Atlanta Community Food Bank, said the nonprofit has seen a 70% increase in the number of people it serves over the past three and a half years.
“That is a reflection of what inflation has done to increase economic pressure on more and more of our neighbors,” he said. “We’ve got to do everything we can to get those folks access to the food that they need.”
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
In October, the city launched emergency response efforts along with a moratorium on late water payment disconnections through the end of January for residential customers. The city also paused evictions from city-owned-and-funded housing complexes for the same period.
Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens said contributions from philanthropic partners like the Why Not You Foundation are critical to help working families weather the holiday season.
“This donation means more meals and dinner and food for people that wouldn’t otherwise be able to eat without it,” he said. “And it means families get a little breathing room during this time of year when it can be stressful and finances can be strapped.”
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