{"id":249673,"date":"2024-08-08T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-08-08T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/?p=249673"},"modified":"2024-08-09T18:30:51","modified_gmt":"2024-08-09T18:30:51","slug":"fort-cavazos-rso-ctfb-bolster-food-security","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/?p=249673","title":{"rendered":"Fort Cavazos\u2019 RSO, CTFB bolster food security"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n Volunteering Soldiers and members of the Central Texas Food Bank package assorts goods, including fresh produce, prepackaged foods and beverages to give to families attending the “Fresh Foods for Families” event Aug. 1, 2024, at the Phantom Warrior Stadium parking lot at Fort Cavazos, Texas. The collaborative effort between Fort Cavazos and its community aims to curb food insecurity for families on post to promote health and wellbeing for Soldiers and their families.
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\n Col. Lakicia Stokes, U.S. Army Garrison-Fort Cavazos commander, poses with volunteering Soldiers at the “Fresh Foods for Families” event Aug. 1, 2024, at the Phantom Warrior Stadium parking lot at Fort Cavazos, Texas. This is one of the first instances of a collaborative food drive with a third party organization taking place on a U.S. Army post.
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FORT CAVAZOS, Texas<\/strong>\u00a0\u2014 The Central Texas Food Bank and the Fort Cavazos Religious Support Office continued their strong partnership between The Great Place and its community by facilitating the third on-post drive-thru pantry event, \u201cFresh Foods for Families,\u201d Aug. 1 at the Phantom Warrior Stadium parking lot.<\/p>\n

\u201cFood insecurities are a priority,\u201d said Chaplain (Capt.) Eugene Savarimuthu, Garrison Chaplain\u2019s Office chaplain resource manager. \u201cWe provide good food \u2026 we make sure none of the product is expired; we make sure our volunteers check on a regular basis.\u201d<\/p>\n

The partnership started June 6 with the first pilot event \u2014 feeding around 250 families, then over 400 on July 3 at the second iteration with fresh produce, meat and packaged goods.<\/p>\n

Savarimuthu said his team planned to feed just over 500 families during the Aug. 1 event, as cars were lined up in two lanes across the approximately 500-yard-wide parking lot.<\/p>\n

Fresh Food for Families is slated to become a recurring event, with the official grand opening Sept. 5.<\/p>\n

Families drive into the parking lot, where volunteers guide drivers to the pickup line. There they will scan a QR code to check in and then fill out basic information such as ages in the household, income, number of household members, address, phone number and dietary preferences. The information is used to tailor prepacked boxes or bags of food. Next, items are loaded into the recipient\u2019s trunk.<\/p>\n

On average, families can receive more than a hundred dollars in groceries.<\/p>\n

Mandy O\u2019Connell, Central Texas Food Bank community distribution manager, spoke on the importance of bringing high-quality foods to families dealing with the heightened costs of groceries in the Fort Cavazos community.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve been trying to get on (Fort Cavazos) for several years,\u201d O\u2019Connell said. \u201cThis is our third distribution (on post). We\u2019re going to be doing it every month on the first Thursday. Each household could have one to six people in it. We do between 40 and 50 pounds of food per household.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe try to do at least 50% fresh produce,\u201d she continued. \u201c(Today) we\u2019ve got corn on the cob, eggplants, all those root vegetables, melons, grapes \u2014 just tons of fresh produce. We\u2019ll give them some protein \u2014 today we have pork, and then all these dried shelf-stable goods \u2026 so they get a nice mix, but we\u2019re really trying to push the fresh produce so that people can get healthy food because that\u2019s what\u2019s most expensive. They\u2019re all going to get, easily, a couple-hundred dollars\u2019 worth of food. It\u2019s just amazing.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Central Texas Food Bank sources its goods from local grocery stores, miscellaneous vendors and individual donors. O\u2019Connell said this effort had a personal tie-in for her because her father is a veteran.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want to make sure that our Soldiers are taken care of,\u201d she said. \u201cThey\u2019re doing a lot of hard work for us, and their families who are supporting them, and right now, the economy is tough for everyone. The people who are defending us and protecting us \u2014 I want to make sure that they are taken care of so it\u2019s really, really awesome for our organization to be here.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom what I heard, we\u2019re the first in the nation to actually get on a base and give food out,\u201d she added. \u201cWe\u2019re really proud of that, and we\u2019re just excited to get food to even just a small portion of the Soldiers and families on our (post).\u201d<\/p>\n

Col. Lakicia Stokes, U.S. Army Garrison-Fort Cavazos commander, spoke to the fellowship aspect of the event.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Fresh Foods for Families program fosters a spirit of unity by bringing together volunteers on Fort Cavazos and the surrounding communities to support a common cause,\u201d Stokes said. \u201cThis collaboration strengthens our bonds, showing how much we can accomplish when we work together to support our military families.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have had the privilege of meeting both recipients and volunteers during these events, and the gratitude expressed by families is truly heartwarming,\u201d Stokes continued. \u201cOne memorable interaction was with a young Soldier who shared how the program relieved some stress for his family, allowing them to focus on other aspects of their lives.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Central Texas Food Bank and Fort Cavazos will celebrate the official opening of the drive-thru pantry Sept. 5 at Phantom Warrior Stadium and continue on every first Thursday of each month. The pantry is open to everyone with access to the post. For more information on Fresh Foods for Families, call the Garrison Chaplain\u2019s Office at 254-288-6545. To learn more about the Central Texas Food Bank, visit\u00a0www.centraltexasfoodbank.org<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

1 \/ 2 Show Caption + Hide Caption \u2013 Volunteering Soldiers and members of the Central Texas Food Bank package assorts goods, including fresh produce, prepackaged foods and beverages to give to families attending the “Fresh Foods for Families” event Aug. 1, 2024, at the Phantom Warrior Stadium parking lot at Fort Cavazos, Texas. The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":249675,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-249673","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249673","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=249673"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249673\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":249678,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249673\/revisions\/249678"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/249675"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=249673"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=249673"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=249673"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}