1 of 3
Curbside service
At Harvest Hope’s Columbia warehouse, drive-through curbside service allows safe social distancing while volunteers deliver groceries to families in need.
Photo by Andrew Haworth
2 of 3
Behind the scenes
When they aren’t distributing food, volunteers and Harvest Hope workers keep the food bank’s warehouse stocked and organized.
Photo by Andrew Haworth
3 of 3
Sign of the times
On food distribution days, cars line up a quarter mile or more down Columbia’s Shop Road, a sign of the sharp increase in demand for services since the COVID-19 pandemic hit South Carolina.
Photo by Andrew Haworth
Enthusiastic “good mornings” ring out like windchimes as more than a dozen volunteers welcome visitors to Harvest Hope, the state’s largest food bank, on a Monday morning in mid-July.
Each masked volunteer is carrying an armload of food—cases of bottled water, dairy products, boxes of fresh produce, selections of canned goods and more—to clients waiting in cars just off the curb of the Shop Road facility in Columbia.
It’s already a sweltering day, and heat is rising in waves off the freshly paved blacktop. Temperatures are approaching 95 degrees, and still, the cars keep coming. Even before the facility opened that morning, the line of cars waiting to enter was backed up a quarter mile.
There are more friendly greetings, more cars, and more food safely tucked away in trunks, truck beds or back seats. Some volunteers break down boxes, others unpack pallets. Everyone is sweating. Food bank staff haul away the empty pallets and piles of cardboard and bring more crates of food from around back, up to the curb. The operation will last until 1 p.m. and volunteers will return on Wednesday to do it again.
Serving others
This is life at Harvest Hope during the COVID-19 pandemic, where safety concerns have resulted in contact-free curbside pickup as demand for the food bank’s services has soared. This summer, Harvest Hope was supporting nearly double the number of families it did before the pandemic, says Taylor Davids, development and communications specialist.
“We’re seeing anywhere from 250 to 300 families a day,” she says. “We top over 1,000 individuals a day, easily.”
The numbers are on the rise throughout the state. Harvest Hope mobile pantries in Florence served more than 90,423 families from March to September, compared to just 2,291 for the same period last year.
The Greenville location is also doing curbside service. Since the beginning of the pandemic, they have helped an average of 1,445 individuals daily on days when the pantry is open. For perspective, that location served an average of 384 people daily during the spring and summer period last year.
Harvest Hope began in 1981 as a collaboration between business leaders and the faith community, who wanted to provide for the hungry in Columbia. The agency grew and now provides help to families in 20 counties in the Midlands, Pee Dee and Upstate.
Harvest Hope accepts donations from individuals, canned food drives and “rescues” food from stores. The food, after being inspected to ensure it’s safe, is distributed to other food pantries, shelters and soup kitchens. They also operate programs to feed vulnerable citizens, such as children, the elderly and rural residents. Harvest Hope estimates there are normally about 700,000 people in South Carolina who don’t have enough food.
The Greenville and Columbia emergency pantries, where families in need can get a week’s supply of groceries for free, have become even more important to the organization’s mission in the wake of COVID-19. In March, the agency switched to curbside service to ensure families get their food safely. Then they had to deal with a shortage of non-perishable goods, foods like canned fruits and vegetables and peanut butter, owing to the grocery-buying frenzy during the first months of the pandemic.
“It was hairy there at the beginning,” Davids says. “The panic buying dropped our retail donations down. We were down 100,000 pounds of food compared to last year in March, so we had to figure that out real quick.”
She credits government grants, local farms, regular donors and the Farmers to Food Banks initiative for helping them restock their pantry. The S.C. Department of Agriculture created the partnership to help farmers donate excess produce to places like Harvest Hope.
Volunteers wanted
In addition to the challenges involved in keeping the pantry stocked, there was also an early volunteer shortage, so the S.C. State Guard pitched in to help until the community responded. Harvest Hope CEO Wendy Broderick calls the volunteer response “awe-inspiring.”
“The COVID-19 crisis has presented many challenges for Harvest Hope,” Broderick says. “One of these challenges was seeking volunteers for the increased demand of our services. We have seen hundreds of volunteers, many who were volunteering with us for the first time, who have dedicated their time to help feed our neighbors in need.”
Talae White, senior manager of the Columbia emergency food pantry, says the operation has a lot of moving parts. Harvest Hope staff work primarily inside the warehouse—keeping track of incoming and outgoing food, organizing the freezers and shelves of items, taking orders from other agencies, inspecting inventory and more. Volunteers primarily serve on the front lines greeting clients and delivering food, careful to follow safe social distancing procedures.
“It's a pretty humbling experience to see how many people are involved in helping to feed people,” White says. “South Carolinians just have a tremendous heart for helping.”
For many of the volunteers, the opportunity to serve—to get out of the house and help others in the middle of the pandemic—is a gift in its own right.
Spring Valley High School senior Taylor Hamilton-Hankins, drenched from a rainstorm on one recent morning, maintained a smile as she filled a cart with groceries and queued up to make a mad dash outside into the rain.
She started volunteering weekly simply to “help out the community,” but found a powerful connection with other volunteers and the people they serve. “It makes me feel good when I see people of different races and genders coming out to help.”
For other volunteers, like Richland 2 educator Susan Gums, volunteering fills a social and spiritual need.
“It’s the camaraderie,” says Gums, who began volunteering in March after schools shut down. “‘It’s nice to share the joy of Jesus. I’m serving; you can’t beat it.”
___
How you can help
Volunteers and donations are always needed to support Harvest Hope’s operations. Volunteers must be at least 15 years old, in good health, and should be able to lift at least 15 pounds and stand for the duration of a two-hour shift. Schedules are posted every Friday. A face mask is required. Visit www.harvesthope.org to learn how you can help.
Harvest Hope also accepts monetary donations on the website, and select food items from their Amazon.com wish list. Links to the Midlands, Pee Dee and Upstate wish lists are on the Harvest Hope COVID-19 response page—harvesthope.org/about/news/how-you-can-help-during-covid-19-crisis.
“People don’t have to participate in a food drive,” Midlands emergency pantry senior manager Talae White says. “They can do it virtually on the website, or when they are ordering food for their family, they can donate to us too.”