Over the past 12 months, Fitzgerald Memorial Baptist Church has been filling a vital need in the community through its establishment and organization of the Cumberland Mobile Food Pantry in collaboration with FeedMore.

According to project coordinator Jerry Seal, the mobile pantry is held at Southworth Power Equipment Co. on the third Monday of each month.

The program started with about 80 recipients and has grown to about 150.

“It’s been very successful,” he said.

As a non-profit collaboration, FeedMore places an emphasis on fighting hunger.

“We are dedicated to fighting hunger in our own back yard and are Central Virginia’s premiere hunger-relief organization comprised of programs that focus on three key areas,” said Norm Gold, chief operations officer at FeedMore.

The areas include feeding children, feeding families and feeding seniors.

“One in seven Central Virginians are food insecure, meaning that a total of 207,000 of our neighbors are not receiving the necessary nutrition,” Gold said.

Seal said FeedMore, based out of Richmond, brings up a truckload of food each month at no cost.

“Our mobile pantry delivers thousands of pounds of food each month to people in the communities where they live, improving their access to healthy, nutritious food,” said Gold.

“Our commitment is to provide families with a variety of perishable and non-perishable food items for well-balanced meals at every distribution.”

Warren Hammonds, the director of agency and regional relations at FeedMore, said Cumberland County is considered a rural food desert, “which, according to the USDA, means that there is no grocery store located within 10 miles of an individual’s primary residence.”

Seal said that their local food bank has about 20 faithful volunteers that help distribute food each month.

In addition to those who come to the pantry, “we have about 20 or so people we deliver to afterwards,” said Seal.

“We like to think of our mobile pantry as a grocery store on wheels,” Hammonds said.

“We are happy to partner with Fitzgerald Memorial Baptist Church to provide healthy food options to the folks in the county who need it most.”

Seal said the only requirement to utilize the food bank is that the individual must live in the county and show a need for the food.

The mobile pantry offers many different food options, including vegetables, canned foods and dry cereal.

“In total, our programs provide 75,000 meals a day to feed hungry neighbors in 34 counties and cities across Central Virginia,” said Gold.

“Fresh produce, healthy proteins and non-perishable foods are distributed to our more than 300 partner agencies, including pantries, emergency shelters, rehab centers, soup kitchens and senior/childcare centers,” he said.

Part of the mission of the food pantry is to get the community involved, said Seal.

“The church wants it to be a blessing to the community.”

For more information on the mobile pantry, contact Jerry Seal at (804) 212-8718.