CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic the Coastal Bend Food Bank has been hard at work helping thousands of people impacted by the pandemic, distributing over 13 million pounds of food last year.
“During the pandemic we saw an increase of demand at least 30 percent, the food was going out of the warehouse faster than we had imagined,” said Executive Director of the Coastal Bend Food Bank, Bea Hanson.
Hanson says at one point the food bank was running out of food and money. That is until they themselves were given a helping hand from Plains Capital Bank.
“That’s when we received a call from the bank and Frank Hastings offered us to apply for the PPP grant,” said Hanson.
“I hadn't heard from the food bank, so I reached out and said are you guys interested in applying and sure enough they did,” said Frank Hastings, Region Chairman of Plains Capital Bank.
Hastings says they were glad they could step in and help.
“Part of our culture’s always been to give back to the communities we serve, and the food bank has certainly always been at the top of our list,” said Hastings.
The food bank received over three hundred thousand dollars.
“That money helped us pay for the operations of the Food Bank so we could use other donations and other money to acquire some food which saved the day and we have been able to meet the need in a way that we never dreamt before,” said Hanson.
Despite the challenges faced from the pandemic and the winter freeze, the food bank continues to take care of the Coastal Bend.
“We have done over 600 distributions just in emergency food this is beyond what we do every day and that is from the time March when the pandemic started to now over 600 emergency distributions and that’s amazing we didn’t know we could do that,” said Hanson.
For the latest updates on coronavirus in the Coastal Bend, click here.
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