Amplify Memphis Day Seven: Mitigating Food Insecurity in Memphis
Today’s guest bloggers are Ginny McCarroll (’18) and Boo McWaters (’20):
Food insecurity is a big issue in Memphis. Today, we took a trip to the Mid-South Food Bank. 
The Mid-South Food Bank was founded in 1981 and is a member of Feeding America, which is the national network of food banks. We met with a man named Clifton Rocket (yes, like the rocket ship) who the described the Mid-South Food Bank and its specific mission. He shared with us that they are a non-profit organization and have teamed up with almost 290 other organizations to provide food to those in need. They get many donations from 
companies that produce and manage foodstuffs such as Kroger, when they have an abundance of product they no longer want or is no longer being sold. We then were taken to their distribution center and were introduced to a man who works at the Mid-South Food Bank named Tonio. Tonio then gave us our job, which was to pack the boxes of non-perishables that would later be distributed by MIFA volunteers to seniors who needed food. We packed a ton afood (a literal ton of food). We packed 2680.2 pounds of food to deliver to the seniors involved in the MIFA
program in just about two hours! This experience was something that made me personally feel like an amazing person. Knowing that so many people were going to get food and no longer be hungry made me feel like I was on top of the world. I really felt as if I was feeding the need, which is the organization’s slogan. This experience was definitely an eye-opening experience.
had so many clients and only one vehicle. We returned to a meeting in the conference room at MIFA with Linda Marks, our MIFA volunteer representative. Sitting around the table, the group shared what we all thought, saw, heard, and/or said while we delivered meals. We were able to reflect on how grateful we were for our own ability to access nutritious and abundant food and how important the meals we just delivered are. We also expressed concern for the men and women on the unfinished route who had not received their meals yet. Overall, our time with the Metropolitan Inner-Faith Association was a learning experience for all of us that opened our eyes to a part of Memphis that we are not used to seeing each day.