Dysfunction Junkies Care: Akron Canton Regional Food Bank

We open the month by focusing on the Akron Canton Regional Food Bank, a regional engine that turns dollars into fresh produce, pantry staples, and lifelines for neighbors across northeast Ohio. With more than 600 partner pantries and programs, 11,000 volunteers, and a facility that runs like a clean, efficient warehouse built for care, this team moves over 40 million pounds of food a year and keeps dignity at the center. Learn more about this months Dysfunction Junkies  CARE organization.

Chapters

• 0:06 Welcome & Monthly Spotlight
• 0:36 Why The Food Bank Matters
• 1:03 Counties Served & Local Access
• 2:07 Donate Dollars, Create Meals
• 2:21 Scale, Programs & 2024 Stats
• 4:29 Global And U.S. Hunger Reality
• 5:44 On-The-Ground Volunteer Insights
• 8:27 Seasonal Need And Facility Tour
• 9:34 How To Get Help Or Give Now
• 10:16 Closing & Ongoing Support

Transcript

DJ NICK: 0:05

Welcome to Junkies Care, a special edition of the Dysfunction Junkies Podcast, where we celebrate great people doing great things. And now, here are your hosts, Chrissy and Carrie.

KERRY: 0:20

Hello, Junkies. I'm Carrie. And I'm Chrissy. It's December 1st.

CHRISY: 0:26

Oh boy.

KERRY: 0:27

I can't believe it.

CHRISY: 0:28

I can, I guess. I've been preparing for this for like six months.

KERRY: 0:35

I hear you. So well, it is December 1st, and this is Junkies Care. So we are kicking off another month of uh celebrating another fantastic organization doing great work in our communities. Yes, we are. Uh Chrissy, you want me to take this one or do you want to talk about it first? I'll touch on it a little bit.

CHRISY: 0:56

Yes. And then you can also give us some great information. You did some uh looking up for us. So the organization we want to highlight this month is the uh Akron Canton uh food bank. Came uh into sort of uh understanding how important this is because of Nick and uh the work he does, and he has a connection uh with the food bank. They service several counties in northeast Ohio Carroll, Holmes, Medina, Portage, Stark, Summit, Tuscarores, and Wayne. And uh the Wayne County Health Department holds their food bank the second Tuesday of every month to service the uh residents here in Wayne County. Okay. Uh it's held at the health department in downtown Worcester, and it's just uh a great organization. They are um buying more food than ever now, which I'm sure is probably true of food banks and food pantries all over. Right. And uh one thing you can do is you can consider coordinating a virtual food and funds drive, and for every one dollar that is contributed, it equals three meals. Oh, that's awesome. So uh definitely check out their website for other locations uh that when they're having their food drives and food uh giveaways at Akroncantonfoodbank.org.

KERRY: 2:21

I was really, really impressed with their website. It was whoever that does their website, great job. Because it really was a full of a lot of information, you know, what they do, and you know, like you mentioned, the different counties that they service, and that they help operate over 600 food pantries, meal site shelters, children and senior programs, and other hunger relief programs. I thought that was amazing.

CHRISY: 2:44

It is amazing.

KERRY: 2:45

And then I was looking at their statistics from 2024. So they had over 40 million pounds of food and essential items that were distributed. They had 11 million pounds of fresh produce distributed, and that I think is amazing because I know there are so many food banks out there, and God bless every single one of them, but to also have fresh produce to be given to people, I that's such a huge plus. So that was that was incredible. And they do this with about 11,000 volunteers who clocked in over 74,000 hours of time to to make all that happen. So great job, Akron Canton Regional Food Bank.

CHRISY: 3:26

Yes, very it's it's so impressive. And I just know uh when we have the one here for Wayne County, yeah, it's just I always ask, how did it go? Right and it's just so exciting to hear how many families came uh and and uh all the food that was provided for them. It's it's just wonderful. And the volunteers, they're great.

KERRY: 3:49

Yeah, and you know, um hunger is something that you know we may joke about sometimes when we're hungry or hangry or whatever, but like, do we really know what hunger is? You know, I'm sure I do. Exactly, you know, but it it is it it's not only a local and regional thing, it's a national and international problem. I was uh doing some fact finding, and globally, it is estimated that one in 11 people face chronic hunger globally, that food insecurity, approximately 2.8 billion people cannot afford a healthy diet, which represents 35% of the global population. And with children, half of all child deaths are linked to malnutrition, and 43 million children under the age of five are severely hungry. And that just like is crushing to think about. It is so, and then when you start looking at the US rates about food insecurity, that basically 13.5% of US households experience food insecurity, and children, 13.8 million children in the United States, again, suffering from that food insecurity. So when I was looking at the stats for the Akron Canton Regional Food Bank, it was saying that one in seven individuals struggle with hunger, one in six children struggle, and 57% of families do not qualify for federal nutrition programs and therefore relied on food banks. So great job to Akron Canton Regional Food Bank for all that you're doing and all the food banks uh around the country and around the world.

CHRISY: 5:24

So it's a it's a wonderful and uh it's uh unfortunately necessary, yeah, but it's wonderful that we have people who who do this. And Nick, do you want to say anything? Because you deal with this first hand.

KERRY: 5:38

Yes, this was one of your picks this time because you have uh per first hand knowledge of it. So tell us about them.

DJ NICK: 5:44

So we uh collaborate with the Akron my my daytime job, we collaborate with the Akron Canton Regional Food Bank, and we we work with them and uh obviously they bring the food and we basically supply the volunteers and we do it for a two-hour period once a month. And you know, we generally most months we usually do about 130 families get food in that two-hour period. That's amazing. Yeah, but I will tell you, last month in November, we they they knew they needed to bring more, they brought more food.

KERRY: 6:12

Right.

DJ NICK: 6:12

And we we ran out at an hour and a half and we gave food for 226 families at that point in time.

KERRY: 6:19

Right.

DJ NICK: 6:20

And usually around this time, uh they they say they've they told the food bank had reported to me that usually the pop-up pantries are busier in November and December anyhow. Yes. But with you know you know, the things that had occurred in November with you know the shutdown, the delay, the snap payments for some families. But I have to tell you, you know, I certainly don't want children to go hungry, but a lot of the people that come through our our particular pop-up pantry are older people.

KERRY: 6:46

Yes.

DJ NICK: 6:46

So let's not forget about our elderly as well. Not that we don't want to certainly obviously we don't want our children to go hungry, but one of the things that I've noticed, and it's anecdotal, I've not like taken the numbers, but it seems to me because I uh when I volunteer for the pantry, a lot of what I do, a lot of times what I do is I register the folks that come through. So and a lot of them are older. Yeah, um, but uh yeah, uh but I will say it's certainly one of the you know uh uh for my day job career, yeah. This is certainly probably one of the most satisfying things that I've done in my career. Awesome. Um to do that for and um we're not too far off some of the statue read. I uh our particular county, Wayne County, uh in particular, we're a little below the the US uh percentage, but we have about 12% of our population is food insecure in Wayne County, but in a definitely worthwhile cause. And I'd certainly encourage, you know, to donate to whatever food bank where you live in in the country or in the world, since we do have some listeners out abroad. Um, but yeah, no, it's definitely worthwhile and you know, folks are hungry.

KERRY: 7:48

Yes, they are. You know, at the church that I work at in my day job, we also have a food pantry. And again, you know, it's typically these winter months, you you always do see an uptick, especially. Part of that is also because some of the other food pantries, or the you know, some of the farm markets or things like that where they can get other additional food sources, those are shutting down now this time of year. So you have less. So then it makes the other ones have more. So, and then just with the holidays and the the demands of that, it definitely has been a busier season for our the the church that I work at for their food pantry, also.

DJ NICK: 8:27

The other thing too, I just want to say, uh, I actually had the opportunity to tour their facility. Oh, cool. In it's in Akron, Ohio. Because they're you know, they're the regional food bank. And uh I'll tell I was really impressed. I mean, it was it was clean, it was very sanitary, it was very so you, you know, what you might think maybe what you know what it's it it it looked like a store. I mean, it really it looked like uh it looked like Sam's Club on steroids.

KERRY: 8:55

Wow.

DJ NICK: 8:55

But with just food. Right. You know, so you know, and they have uh clean rooms, they call clean rooms to prepare, you know, if they have to do any preparation or anything like that. They actually have like an an in in their facility, they also have like an in-store pantry, kind of like a thing. But uh very impressive operation, doing a lot of great work, not just in Wayne County as you s as you indicated all the other counties, but just you know, top to bottom. Uh very impressed with them and very very happy with. We've been partners with we they've partnered with us for about a year and a half now.

KERRY: 9:28

That's amazing.

DJ NICK: 9:28

You know, I guess just to just to say if you know someone that and we'll just bring this down to Wayne County, yeah. Uh December 9th will be our next pop-up pantry. But I would say if you're you can't wait till then and you need more food now, you go to their website, acronymcanton regional.org. Or Akroncanton Regional Foodbank.org. Make sure I have that right. You have and uh there's um certainly uh you can go down there and they'll they'll give they can tell you where you can get food today. You don't have to wait till the 9th of December. But we are having that from 11 to 1 at our location.

KERRY: 10:02

That's awesome. And I mean, really, it has to be a pretty impressive facility to handle 40 million pounds of food a year. That's just it blows my mind. That's incredible. So this month, definitely supporting them. And like we said, if you're not close by or not in this area, there are many, many places that you can uh reach out to in your community, uh, whether it's locally, whether it's statewide, nationally here in the US, or even international programs to help. Uh, so definitely want to do that. And we're gonna be posting this. The Akron Canton Regional Food Bank is gonna be on our junkies care website this month. So you can go to dysfunction junkiespodcast.com. Also throughout the month, I think I'm gonna start throwing up on there uh some different websites for other um national and international places that you can donate to uh for if for hunger.

CHRISY: 10:53

So absolutely. You have people all over. So we do want to make sure we get everyone covered. Absolutely.

KERRY: 11:00

So tonight, whenever you uh maybe think about if you're gonna go to that go out to eat for a restaurant, or maybe you're gonna go grab a hamburger at a local fast food restaurant, maybe think about instead of purchasing that for yourself, using that money and donating it toward uh local food bank.

CHRISY: 11:13

Absolutely.

KERRY: 11:14

All righty. Well, it is uh good talking about this. We can't wait to give you more information throughout the month. Otherwise, have a wonderful week. Bye, everybody.