Island Harvest distributes food at nine different Nassau sites

“No one should have to question where their next meal is coming from,” wrote Nassau County Executive Laura Curran in a Facebook post on April 23. Her sentiment echoes the goal of Island Harvest Food Bank, with which the county recently partnered to distribute food at nine different local sites. 

In Curran’s social media post, she announced that the county had joined with the Bethpage-based food bank to provide enough meals to feed roughly 1,000 families in one day.

This continues Island Harvest’s efforts to help the growing number of Long Island residents who were furloughed or lost their jobs due to business closures or stagnations.

The food bank first launched an emergency response program on March 9 to help residents who were financially impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic. This included its Emergency Contingency Business Plan to put in place specific measures to ensure the health and safety of its staff members, volunteers, clients and food.

Through its emergency response plan, the organization has purchased 50 percent more food than it usually does. Staff members surveyed 124 school districts and identified 32 that needed support providing meals to students. For such districts, staff members and volunteers created pop-up, drive-through food distribution centers.

It run a mobile food pantry to distribute food to about 300 nonprofits, and delivered food to roughly 1,700 people who couldn’t leave their homes, including seniors, veterans and the immunocompromised.

More information to follow.