TEXAS, USA — Mobile pantries in Grimes, Madison and Washington County have been given an extra boost with a new pilot program thanks to Feeding Texas and Tito's Vodka.
“We set up our mobile pantries, we have four of them. We set them up in the areas we call a food desert, where they don’t have access to a lot of our public pantries access to food,” explained Mobile Pantry Coordinator, Andi Hawthorne.
However, thanks to the two organizations, they’re now able to add medical services to their mobile pantries.
“We supported this pilot program with a gift of $50,000 to Feeding Texas to bring this program to life and part of those funds were to be able to help create these pantry access to medical care, and part of that was to help them replicate this program to different communities across the state,” said Tito's Vodka's Director of Philanthropy Operations, Lindsey Bates.
These groups are trying to break down the financial and geographic barriers that stop people from living their healthiest lives.
“Basically it’s a holistic approach so that people facing hunger can both access the food they need to lead healthy lives via mobile distribution in their area, but they can also get the medical services they need at no cost to them," explained CEO of Feeding Texas, Celia Cole. "They are basically on site helping facilitate Medicare sign up, they disseminate vaccine information, they do cancer screenings, mammograms Hepatitis C testing and a whole lot more.”
Since the program's launch in March, the project has already helped over 1,300 Texans.
“Eating healthy is very expensive health care is very expensive so if we can point them to a clinic they might not know about then we’ve done extra for our clients,” said Hawthorne.
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