And right now, during a pandemic and all of the economic challenges that come with it, might seem like bad timing.
Thousands of central Ohio residents and business owners are struggling to maintain home and health in this difficult time.
And that’s actually part of the reason for Mid-Ohio Food Collective’s potentially game-changing ask.
“The need is now,” Steve Steinour, Huntington Bank’s chairman, president and
chief executive officer told the Dispatch Editorial Board.
He is right.
Hunger cannot wait, and neither can efforts to combat it.
The need has been described in scores of Columbus Dispatch articles over the years and a recent CBS “60 Minutes” segment showcasing the impact of COVID-19 on Columbus.
The Mid-Ohio Food Collective is in the midst of a $30-million fundraising campaign geared toward raising money for more food pantries, to run its Hilltop farm and to open a kitchen, likely at its main Grove City facility.
The campaign has already raised $24 million through more than 100 donors, and aims to raise another $6 million to reach its goal. The campaign started Thursday We had a lot of people struggling beforehand, said Matt Habash, the collective s CEO. COVID did nothing but make numbers go up.
Before the pandemic, the collective served 525,000 people throughout its 20-county service area in Ohio in 2019
In 2020, that jumped to 660,000 with 1.2 million visits.
Our View: Mid-Ohio Food Collective needs and deserves our help dispatch.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from dispatch.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Soon, President Biden is expected to sign a third COVID recession relief plan just days before emergency unemployment benefits expire. For many the need is great, in part, because this recession is the most unequal in modern history. This past Friday, new jobs numbers confirmed that middle and high-income workers are returning but the jobs of low-income Americans have been annihilated. Relief checks have been a lifeline, but temporary. Many, like the Americans you re about to meet, were already struggling in poverty when COVID pushed them over the edge. As they fall, the pandemic is cutting away at the safety net. For 23-year-old Courtney Yoder, the cruel recession hit just as she was saving enough from her job to move out of a tent, anticipating the birth of her first child.
While many middle and high-income workers are back at work, the country's low-wage workers are still suffering from a recession that has annihilated their jobs. Scott Pelley reports.