Second Harvest Food Bank

Agency Information:

The region we serve is rural in nature and a significant portion of our population lives at or below the poverty level. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, approximately 14.3% of the people in this region (about 68,000) live in poverty. This rate is above both the state and national poverty rates (13.5% and 12.4% respectively). The situation is more desperate in our most rural counties. Nearly one-third (29.4%) of the population living in Hancock County live below the poverty level. In Johnson County, more than 1 in 5 live in poverty (22.6%).

Children are not immune to the reality of their economic situation. In Hancock County, 4 out of 5 children (80.9%) regularly attending public school are eligible for free or reduced cost meals. In Johnson County the circumstances are marginally better – 2 out of 3 children (68.7%) are eligible for free or reduced cost meals. Overall, 40.9% of the children in public school in our service region are eligible for subsidized meals at school. (School meal data collected as part of Second Harvest’s 2001 Hunger in Northeast Tennessee study.)

The people we work to serve are the men, women, and children living in poverty in our community – our friends, our neighbors, our families. They are the reason we work so hard every day to gather food and distribute it to the non-profit charities that ultimately put the food into hungry people’s hands. Our desire to see that no one go hungry motivated us to distribute nearly 3 million pounds of food in 2001 – 21% more food than in the previous year. This year, we face an even greater demand for our services. We distributed 3.6 million pounds of food last year and continue to see the need rise.