A drive-through food distribution will be happening in Jacksonville at the end of this week.
Healthy Jacksonville and the Central Illinois Food Bank are teaming up again to host the distribution this Friday, February 26th.
The distribution will be held behind the Spirit of Faith Soup Kitchen located on 105 East Dunlap Street and bordering North Main Street. Director of Community Benefit and Relations for Passavant Hospital, Lori Hartz says organizers have a specific traffic flow planned for the event.
“We’re not going to line up in front of the soup kitchen because we get a lot of people that come out for these. We have a traffic pattern established that is going to have people line up on North East Street, we want to avoid Main Street and Independent because our food distribution is being held at 3:00 pm.
People generally line up in advance of 3 pm and we want to avoid any traffic congestion from school letting out at Lincoln School. Our goal here is to line ourselves away from the regular traffic patterns and get people through the distribution quickly.”
Hartz says the distribution will run until supplies last and there is no preregistration required to receive food. She says special thanks is owed to Dot Foods who are again donating the food for the distribution. Harts says Dot delivers food by the truckload and volunteers then separate and package the food into family ready bundles.
She says it takes a number of volunteers to repackage the food and several service organizations are again assisting with the event.
“We have a number of groups helping us already; The Jacksonville Rotatory Club and the Jacksonville Kiwanis Club both provide a hefty number of volunteers for our food distribution. We also have a healthy Jacksonville food collaborative group who is responsible for organizing these food distributions. They include all the providers of food in our community along with our healthy Jacksonville community health workers. We also have volunteers from Prairie Land United Way board of directors who help with these.”
Hartz says they are always welcoming volunteers and anyone who is interested in lending a hand Friday should come to the outside area near the Spirit of Faith Soup Kitchen at 1:00 pm when they will begin packaging the food. She says volunteers are needed anytime between 1:00 and 4:30 pm.
Harts says the Healthy Jacksonville Initiative is a part of Passavant Area Hospital’s larger effort to provide community service in the Jacksonville area.
“Part of our community health initiative is our community health program called Healthy Jacksonville. Most of our community agencies are familiar with our program, that connects people in the community with the many services that we have In Jacksonville. Passavant is dedicated to community health and helping people be healthier in Jacksonville and of course, providing food is essential to that.”
The Food Distribution will open at 3:00 pm this Friday behind the Spirit of Faith Soup Kitchen on Dunlap Street. Those who plan to receive food should wear a face covering and clear space in the trunk of their vehicle so distribution volunteers can safely load the food. Participants should line up on East Street between Walnut and Wolcott.