MACON, Ga. — 13WMAZ's Stuff the Truck campaign is a tradition folks in Central Georgia can count on to help those experiencing food insecurity.
We've partnered with the Middle Georgia Community Food Bank to do that.
While this event isn't new, renovations are at the food bank's headquarters. They say it helps them serve the community better.
If there were eight Central Georgians in one room, one of them wouldn't know when their next meal would be.
"It's estimated that over 85,000 people are food insecure," said Kathy McCollum– Middle Georgia Community Food Bank president
She says they aim to keep the community fed. It's their 42nd year doing it.
"The legend is that it started with a pickup truck, and then it was relocated to different places, and it's grown through the years to now serving 24 counties," McCollum explained.
They moved into their current 30,000-square-foot warehouse in 2006.
"The warehouse was perfect for what the food bank needed, but the office space was very small," she said.
Christina Ford, Chief Operating Officer, agrees that it was packed.
"The rest of the staff, we had to makeshift their offices. We had three other individuals who had to share their office space with the receptionist," she said
Or some offices were just in the conference room.
"When we had meetings, and we had to go into the conference room, we had two individuals who had desks in there. So, they stayed in there, or we had to ask them to leave if it was a private meeting. That really made it difficult, but we made it work," Ford explained.
McCollum says they had no space to hire more employees or volunteers. So, they fixed it with a grant from the State Department of Community Affairs and Macon-Bibb matching the donation amount.
"Allowed us to be able to add on our new administrative space and renovate our old space," McCollum said. "It's a game changer for us."
They have office space now.
"A brand new building that's actually sitting in the place our parking lot used to be," she said.
The old parking lot was so small, she says, that employees used to have to move their cars out of the way for big food delivery trucks.
"Now we do have a dedicated meeting room– conference room now," said McCollum.
Where makeshift office spaces used to be, there's a new volunteer area.
"The space we had for volunteers in the past was in the very back corner of the warehouse. So, any volunteers that came in had to walk through our warehouse and through forklift traffic," she explained. "If someone needed a restroom, they had to come back to the front of the building for that. So, that just created additional hazards for our employees and our volunteers. Now, we're going to be able to serve our community much, much better. We're going to be able to grow that agency network so that we're able to be out there for the people who need assistance in any of our 24 counties anytime."
Do a few new cubicles help serve their mission better?
Ford says it does.
"To know that the community appreciates us, are willing to invest in us so that way we do have this nice facility so that we can continue our mission, it's like we dreamed about it," Ford said.
McCollum says renovations began In July 2022, and they've just finished up some of their spaces a few days ago.
She says volunteers will be able to come to the building to help out at the start of the new year.