BUTTE — Butte’s Emergency Food Bank is feeling the pressure as COVID-19 cases continue to surge and people struggle financially.
“We’re struggling. Everyone’s working very hard,” said food bank director Kathy Griffith.
The Town Pump Charitable Foundation is matching $750,000 in contributions to state food banks, including the one in Butte, to help.
The Butte food bank is seeing more clients since funding from unemployment and the federal stimulus have run out for many people.
“It’s crazy, it goes in spurts, now without any help out there for our clients they’re all coming back in, so it’s gotten real busy,” said Griffith.
This must be done with social distancing protocols in place.
“We’ve got to make sure our people, our volunteers here are kept and we want to make sure the clients are safe,” said Griffith.
Being food insecure is stressful on its own, but in this time of the coronavirus, the food bank and its clients are dealing with even bigger challenges.
“Everyone feels the stress of COVID and they're isolated, and people are getting very antsy and aggravated easy. We want to help relieve some of that stress by giving them the food and hopefully making it an easy process,” said Griffith.
The food bank will take donations of non-perishable food items or money. They use that money to buy most of the food from local businesses.
