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‘Reaching Out to Durham’s Hungry’ drink
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Documentary photographer, writer and filmmaker turns her lens to the volunteers helping to feed our community WO RDS A N D P H OTO GR AP HY BY R HO NDA KL E VANSKY
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Theresia McGee runs Hannah’s Community Kitchen. She and her volunteers served nearly 5,600 households in 2020, and they currently feed more than 1,300 people every month. She sources the food through her volunteers, Food Bank of Central & Eastern North Carolina, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and local churches. She also volunteers at a nearby church’s food pantry, which serves close to 1,660 individuals twice a month.
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Julian Xie is one of the founders of the Duke University School of Medicine student organization Root Causes and its Fresh Produce Program, which assists food-insecure patients referred from Duke primary care clinics and Lincoln Community Health Center. Students and other volunteers take food to hundreds of people on a biweekly rotating schedule. The longterm goal of the program is for health care to encompass food distribution and equitable access to good nutrition.
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Elijah King is a community activist and college student who founded the Durham Neighbors Free Lunch Initiative during his senior year at Riverside High School.
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here are people lining up for donated food in Durham on any given day of the week. Sometimes they wait for hours. Our fellow Durhamites are deciding whether they will be able to pay rent, afford transportation to work, pay for medicines or buy nutritious food. The latter often comes last. The pandemic magnified the food insecurity in our county – according to Durham County Food Security coordinator Mary Oxendine, data shows an estimated 12% of North Carolinians say they don't have enough to eat. In Durham, 25% of families with children are food insecure. Durham County food pantry use was 152% higher in 2021 compared to 2019. Furthermore, she says BIPOC households in the state are four times more likely to be food insecure and experience job loss at twice the rate of white households. But people also can show their best selves in troubled times, and many have stepped up. They run food pantries, donate food and raise money for those in need. Though it is painful to see the hunger, Theresia McGee of Hannah’s Community Kitchen says “the gratitude of the recipients is palpable.” “A woman, tears rolling down her face said to me, ‘This is a blessing for my children and myself,’” Theresia says. Thanks to the efforts of Theresia and others printed here – which represent only a tiny portion of the helpers in our city – I embarked on this project to show not the shadow of hunger, but the light of our citizens who are caring for one another.
Ninth Street Bakery owner Ari Berenbaum donated more than $30,000 toward food aid in the form of contributions, bread and free meals during the pandemic. He simultaneously started Durham Neighbors, which has directed more than $70,000 in microdonations to the low-income Durham community.