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Fairfield food bank MANNA now serving over 200 households monthly
Southeast Iowa Union offers audio versions of articles using Instaread. Some words may be mispronounced.
FAIRFIELD – The food bank known as Meeting Ageless Nutritional Needs Abundantly (MANNA) reported an uptick in usage earlier this month after SNAP benefits were temporarily interrupted.
Steve Ernst, co-director of MANNA, told The Union that the organization’s volunteers get to know the people who regularly use the food bank, and in early November they began seeing more people come through the line they had never seen before. Since food from MANNA is a service that has to be signed up for, Ernst said those new people in the program were told to come back at 4:30 p.m. after the food was distributed to see if there was any extra.
At its most recent allocation earlier this month, MANNA distributed food to 450 individuals in 219 households, about double the number the group was serving in the spring of 2024.
Fairfield First United Methodist Church began its program to provide food to the elderly and disabled in June 2020. Former Methodist Church pastor Beth Harbaugh told The Union at the time that the program was created to serve people who were falling through the cracks, people who couldn’t leave their homes or who were not strong enough to carry boxes from a food pantry.
In the five years since then, the Methodist Church and Food Bank of Iowa have partnered to gather non-perishable items such as soups, canned fruit, peanut butter, rice, crackers, vegetables and lots of other cooking supplies.
Ernst said he’s been pleased by the participation from the community in helping deliver the food, which included representatives from Prestige Care Center taking two van loads at the last allocation, Cambridge Investment Research Inc. helping with the distribution, and Mayor Connie Boyer pitching in, too.
Food boxes are delivered to residents on a monthly basis, mostly in Fairfield but also some in neighboring towns such as Batavia, Keosauqua, Douds, Milton, Hillsboro, Libertyville and Sigourney. Deliveries are made on the first Tuesday of the month.
Call Andy Hallman at 641-575-0135 or email him at andy.hallman@southeastiowaunion.com
