In the middle of September in Athens-Clarke County, the streets flooded with herds of rushing students, workers obliviously spilling onto the streets, and more pedestrians pushing through the crowds to reach their destination. 

One man, Trevor Dunn, walked with haste, falling into the pattern of those around him, he kept to himself and passively walked through the active downtown scene. He crossed paths with a man sitting on the street that looked at him for acknowledgement. Like a habit he had grown, he acted dismissively toward him and continued with his walk. Dunn arrived at what is called the Sparrow’s Nest where he volunteers to serve lunch to those in need. 

After an hour rolled by, the same man on the street from before came strolling in to ask for some food. Trevor spoke to him more extensively than before, realizing that the man was much like anyone else he knew. He was kind but with an unfortunate situation, a grumbling stomach and no money to eat.

“Serving that person and seeing how kind they were, it was just like a moment of clarity, where I was like, okay, I need to take some time to personally reflect because I’m embodying a stereotype,” Dunn said.

Dunn’s past of being relatively food insecure around the age of 12, brought him some hindsight into what he does now for himself and others.

“I’ve changed a lot,” Dunn said knowingly of his past. 

Now he volunteers his time at the Sparrows Nest food distribution center a few times a week. He helps by feeding those who come in for lunches, dinners, and packed food for the families on the go. Organizations such as the Sparrow’s Nest here in Clarke County attend to people who are food insecure in a variety of ways to help meet their food needs.

Clarke County continuously faces food insecurity, despite the efforts of distribution centers, volunteers, and programs made. The community is underfed.

Food insecurity is defined by the United States Department of Agriculture as the lack of access, at times, to enough food for an active, healthy life. It is prevalent nationally and globally, but specifically in Athens, Clarke County it affects 15% of its population. That is about 19,010 people according to Feeding America, a four star hunger relief organization that is implemented across the United States.

Feeding America’s data on Clarke County’s food insecurity

The efforts being made to assist this area is by larger food banks and organizations that target communities for distributing their aid. The Food Bank of Northeast Georgia pulls its resources to aid in the distribution of food, decreasing food insecurity in Clarke County and the counties surrounding it. They partnered with the Athens-Clarke County government where one of their current warehouses, off of Newton Bridge Road in Athens, is planned to expand their facility’s capacity to hold food.

This means more food gets distributed to Clark County, the surrounding counties, and the local food banks where they may use their donations and supplies to feed their communities.

Clark County receives about $350,000 in value of food to bring relief to those who are food insecure yearly. This amount they now receive is three to seven times more than the amount it takes to feed the surrounding counties that the food bank provides for.

With the expansion of the food bank that begins in January of 2023, the total aid will increase. The amount of space they are projecting is to be over double what it is now, approximately a 65 percent increase. This allows a 38 percent increase in dry food that can be stored and an 84 percent increase in the amount of fresh food that can be stored.

       The expansion plans and projections of The Food Bank of Northeast Georgia

One of the organizations that receives their canned goods from The Food Bank of Northeast Georgia is the Sparrow’s Nest. This is an example of one organization that streamlines its food to distribute locally within its community. The organization receives the majority of its clientele through word of mouth. They see a variety of people including the homeless population, or those who are struggling around the poverty line come in and ask for canned goods. They are distributed by their own emergency canned goods program. 

Looking at the capacity in which they consistently feed the surrounding communities, The Sparrow’s Nest event coordinator, Austin Harper tells how it is all attainable with their full kitchen staff and industrial style kitchen. They use this kitchen to cook breakfast and lunch for all weekdays, except for Thursdays when they are closed. They still offer sack lunches on their absent day.

Harper emphasized the freshly cooked meals that they serve. For example, for their breakfast, they typically have eggs, sausage, grits and a biscuit. As for the lunch, they try to cook and serve similarly in terms of quality.

“We don’t serve them anything that me or you would not eat so it is all good stuff,” said Harper. The Sparrow’s nest shows what their efforts are through their offerings of food to the community.

With a mindset and similar goal, but a different method the Campus Kitchen makes strides as a dual mission organization. They rescue food that would otherwise be wasted and help the hunger relief scene.

In terms of their clientele, they have families they get connected with from the Athens community council on Aging. These students prepare meals and grocery bags that get delivered to those clients. Currently, the Campus Kitchen is working to feed 50 families every single week. 

Check out the @campuskitchenuga page for more photos of what they cook, collect and grow.

The Campus Kitchen also works with about nine different Clark County nonprofits and agencies that work in hunger relief. They deliver produce and other food donations to those organizations through their UGArden. 

Additionally, in terms of their work in distributing fresh produce that is not from the UGArden, the Campus Kitchen works with donations from Trader Joe’s. According to Andie Bisceglia, their Campus Kitchen coordinator, the food they receive is second hand, but their team works on picking the best food from their collection.

“Even though they’re secondhand quote on quote, it is all food that is perfectly beautiful and still good to eat,” said Bisceglia.

She mentions one of the jobs of their food collecting crew is to go through that food and anything that is moldy, punctured, or reused gets composted at the UGArden compost pile. The food they receive is about 500 to 1,000 pounds from Trader Joe’s and this does not include the 200 to 300 extra pounds they receive from the Earth Fair. They have this extra food once a week along with the donated food.

The quality of food is a concern when distributing, and the Campus Kitchen makes their efforts to show that concern.

“We don’t want our clients to feel as though they’re getting food that they would not pick for themselves at the grocery store,” said Bisceglia, their coordinator.

The efforts from these food organizations are persistent because of the ongoing problem of food insecurity that Clark County faces. The reasons for this insecurity although not always directly caused by one factor, it continues happening all around Clark County for numerous reasons. A common misconception recognized by many of these organizations and specifically Bisceglia is that “food insecurity can mean a lot of different things,” not just exist in the realm of homelessness. 

According to Baiscegila, a large reason for food insecurity stems from living on the poverty line or in poverty. The poverty rate of Clark County is 28.3 %, which accounts for 26,000 residents living in poverty. This means approximately 11,000 households live in poverty. Of those families that are living below or around the poverty line, 65 to 90 percent of them are working families who are not making a sustainable living wage for their household.

“So that means that those families are choosing between feeding their family and paying rent or buying medication and keeping the lights on, every month, that’s a decision that they’re making,” said Bisceglia.

She speaks at length of the reasons she has heard and seen that many citizens may not be aware of, but still put people into food insecure situations. She points out that if you don’t have a car and have to drive an hour to the grocery store and back in order to get the food that you need to survive, that is considered being food insecure.

More so, whatever food someone might be accessing may not be nutritious food or culturally appropriate food. In terms of this culturally appropriate food, there are immigrant families that may not have access to the foods they know how to cook or to the foods they are used to eating, making them food insecure.

The circumstances of food insecurity do not exclude the younger population of Clark County. One in four kids is living in poverty and that is approximately 4,100 food insecure kids. These are children under the age of 18. This does not account for the college student population.

The situations that bring a college student into food insecurity are prominent and commonly overlooked. Baiscegila explains how graduate students who are here on scholarship make about $17,000 a year. At face value that is a large sum to receive altogether, but she explains many costs such as the increasing rent prices being between $500 and $1,000 due to inflation. It leaves about $7,000 left over for students to purchase food, buy books, clothes, and all other essentials. 

She made it aware that the foreign student population faces this issue every day, as graduate or undergraduate students, since they don’t have work visas. Whatever money they receive on their scholarships is all that they have, and she says it is a bigger issue that she has seen for these students specifically. 

With supplied or earned money, there is a population of students that live with the risk of falling into being technically impoverished and food insecure. Many live the classic broke college student life as Dunn had described where you are eating packs of ramen to stay afloat. He emphasizes that there are many students that don’t know where their next meal is going to come from.

He mentions that a student may have a few hundred or thousands of dollars saved, but that it would take one medical emergency and they would be caught under these circumstances of not only being impoverished but food insecure.

“I think that most people don’t necessarily understand that that is a very real problem for a ton of their peers,” said Dunn.

Besides the food donations, collections, and distributions, those efforts as much as they improve the access to food for many, it does not solve food insecurity. To bring the Clark County population out of or sustained from food insecurity in total would take $10,573,000, According to Feeding America, food insecurity doesn’t show to dissipate or rapidly decrease as the variables that push people into food insecurity are abundant. What still exists are the community efforts that citizens can contribute to bringing aid to the situation.

The Sparrow’s Nest coordinator, Austin Harper speaks on how they have a steady flow of volunteers. People can call and speak to the volunteer coordinator Anna Wise, to come in and help with their different service opportunities. Dunn, their consistent volunteer, tells how he does not always cook or distribute, but that he helps in all areas of the space.

“Obviously, just because these people are experiencing insecure situations doesn’t mean that they should deserve to be served or given subpar service,” Dunn said.

The efforts by the community may be monetary in value such as pounds of food or money donations, but time and work are not always abundant. Food insecurity is not fully amendable and is an ongoing condition in Clark County.