A group called Dare to Care has been feeding families in Kentucky for years, and with new donations from Anthem Blue Cross, Blue Shield, Medicare and the anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield Foundation, we'll have more money to expand its warehouses and feed more families in Kentucky and Indiana.
Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield with $432,000 investment and with the foundation, It's just incredible when I think about what that's going to mean for families over the years.
During this time, we really plan to be able to serve more families, provide more access to food, not just any type of food, but fresh and healthy food, which we know you have better health outcomes when you're eating better food.
It's a huge investment, you know, especially when we think about the food insecurity that we've seen over the past year and a half increase in around 30 to 40% for many of our partners, as well as what the USDA has put out a report verifying that actual statistic, the over investment is $732,000 and that's a significant amount in terms of what they've already invested.
Starting in 2021 with this partnership with Dare to Care.
And so we've been able to benefit.
And because we've benefited, our neighbors have benefited the most.
We have a big focus on the organizations that aren't often have that much popularity or notoriety in the community.
A lot of things, the grassroots people down are actually what the people helping them.
Making sure that they have help with the housing, which is, of course, a big thing with food security.
We've been seeing a steady increase since 2020.
You know, and what's really challenging at this time is during 2020, during the pandemic, there were a lot of government supports, a lot more safety nets provided for our neighbors who were experiencing food insecurity, had child tax credit tax credits.
You had additional resources, food, additional food that was coming from the federal government to support our neighbors when those resources were depleted and cease to exist through our federal government.
We started seeing also at the same time, we saw food inflation, we saw gas inflation.
And so with that happening and with the decrease of benefits, it was almost like unfortunately, a perfect storm for the increase in food insecurity that we're seeing today.
Nothing's wrong with asking for help.
Nothing's wrong with realizing that people are you know, everyone needs the basic things food, shelter, water and air.
And there's nothing wrong with people having those little things and helping out with the community when it's most needed, especially around these times since it is the holidays.
When you think about food equity, we look at it from the standpoint of really providing access to health and fresh food no matter what zip code you live in.
And that's our first goal in terms of what we do.
Food is medicine is really fairly new, a fairly new idea in thought, even though we know food is actually medicine in terms for healing of the body, but really thinking about it from a food banking perspective, it's really providing our neighbors opportunities where they may get health care provisions for them selves, that they are also able to have access to food as well.
We're wanting to be really innovative in our approach in terms of thinking about food security.
And so in that one of the things we're looking to do is to dedicate 10,000 square feet to hydroponics, where we have indoor controlled farming that will be used as not only an educational space, but opportunity to employ urban farmers.
The ties right in to what we're looking at is when we think about food as medicine and providing healthy food and making sure that our neighbors have access to the very best.
Dare to Care also has a prescriptive pantry program where they partner with health clinics to educate and provide food insecure families with nutritious food and knowledge on practicing wellness and healthy eating in their households.