38 | October 2019
G I V I N G
V
ehicles and people started lining up
outside the Second Harvest Food Bank
of Southeast North Carolina early on a
Saturday morning in September.
It was Second
Saturday and the food bank was
getting ready to give boxes of fresh
produce and dairy items, meat and
shelf-stable foods to anyone who
declared themselves to be living in or
near poverty.
Sharon, a 57-year-old Fayetteville
resident who took a city bus to the
food bank, was ready to do so. "I don't
have any food at home," she said.
"is is a godsend."
e food bank, a program of Action Pathways, typically
distributes the 10 million-plus pounds of food that it
secures each year to more than 260 partner organizations in
its seven-county region. ose organizations then distribute
the food to needy people.
But in recent months, Fayetteville-
based Second Harvest has received
more food than its partner
organizations can handle.
So the food bank had to come up
with other ways to distribute excess
food while it was still fresh. us, in
June, the Second Saturday giveaways
began.
Too much food is a good problem
as long as there are ways to get it to
SECOND SATURDAYS
A new program in the daily fight against hunger
BY JANE VAUGHAN | PHOTOGRAPHY BY MATTHEW WONDERLY
