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Local organization helps close the gap for food insecure families

Second Helpings Atlanta has over 360 volunteers that help rescue fresh produce, dairy products and baked goods from a host of vendors.

ATLANTA — According to a local organization, billions of pounds of food end up in landfills and thousands of metro Atlanta families are food insecure.

Second Helpings Atlanta has a mission to end food waste in the city. The organization has over 360 volunteers that help rescue fresh produce, dairy products and baked goods from a host of vendors.

"We are about feeding hungry people by taking surplus food and keeping it out of landfills,” Executive Director Andrea Jaron said. 

The nonprofit rescued more than 4 million pounds of fresh food, according to the director. Vendors around the metro helped donate all of the food needed to support their cause. 

Volunteers are the heart of Second Helpings of Atlanta. They work in a full-scale assembly line in unison to put together, box and ship nutritious and balanced meals to thousands of food insecure Atlanta families.

Each day, volunteers make runs in their own vehicles picking up hundreds of pounds of food from vendors and getting it all to local food pantries.

For Evie Sacks, volunteering is a labor of love. She's been helping the organization for over a decade. 

“The simplicity of it. The directness of it. You see in 90 minutes what you can achieve and it’s really satisfying,” Sacks said.

She delivers the several hundred-pound pickups from Whole Foods and other stores to the Solidarity Food Pantry in Sandy Springs. Its founder, Jennifer Barnes, started Solidarity to help families during the pandemic.

“We thought we were feeding 10 families for two weeks and here we are three years later now serving over 60,000 families,” Barnes said.

Last year, the organization completed 9,000 routes with millions of pounds of food collected for needy families.

The second part of the organization is called “Meals with Meaning," where volunteers prepare thousands of food servings that will go out to the community.

The organization hopes to continue helping metro Atlanta families and continue to end the gap in food insecurities. 

To learn more about the nonprofit and its efforts visit here

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