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City of Scranton and local foundation help to streamline food donations and distributions

The City of Scranton and the Scranton Area Community Foundation announce funding for a position within the Lackawanna Food Policy Council to help improve coordination between agencies addressing food insecurity in the City and region. From left: Cathy Fitzpatrick, Scranton Area Community Foundation Director of Grants and Scholarships; Jane Risse, Greenhouse Project Founds and Executive Director; Gretchen Hunt, Commission on Economic Opportunity Director of Nutrition Programs and Resource Development; Meghan Loftus, Friends of the Poor President and CEO; Scranton Mayor Paige G. Cognetti, Maggie Martinelli, Scranton Area Community Foundation COO; Sherry Frable, City of Scranton Office of Economic and Community Development Director; Liza Carroll, City of Scranton Community Development Manager; and Channel Kearse, City of Scranton Outreach Coordinator.
Chris Hughes
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City of Scranton
The City of Scranton and the Scranton Area Community Foundation announce funding for a position within the Lackawanna Food Policy Council to help improve coordination between agencies addressing food insecurity in the City and region. From left: Cathy Fitzpatrick, Scranton Area Community Foundation Director of Grants and Scholarships; Jane Risse, Greenhouse Project Founds and Executive Director; Gretchen Hunt, Commission on Economic Opportunity Director of Nutrition Programs and Resource Development; Meghan Loftus, Friends of the Poor President and CEO; Scranton Mayor Paige G. Cognetti, Maggie Martinelli, Scranton Area Community Foundation COO; Sherry Frable, City of Scranton Office of Economic and Community Development Director; Liza Carroll, City of Scranton Community Development Manager; and Channel Kearse, City of Scranton Outreach Coordinator.

The City of Scranton and the Scranton Area Community Foundation will help fund a position that will coordinate donations and distributions to local agencies addressing food insecurity.

"That person can help be really the glue between all of the hunger organizations in our area," Mayor Paige Cognetti said.

That future employee will work for the Food Policy Council of Lackawanna County, which was established about eight years ago.

The city and foundation are providing $20,000 total for the position. 

Cognetti said sometimes a pallet of food will be available. A person from one of the local agencies may be taken away from their job for the day to distribute the donation to other organizations. This new position will be responsible for coordinating that as well as facilitating all aspects of the council’s activity and collaboration among its members, according to the city.

Scranton's contribution — $10,000 — is coming from the city's 2024 budget. They put together a Hunger Task Force last year.

The position is not just for the city.

"Here in Scranton, Lackawanna County, and our whole region, we're seeing a lot of people in need ever since COVID. But it has not stopped," Cognetti said. "So many of those organizations are concentrated here in Scranton, but we've got to solve this issue on an organizational level. We can't limit it to just organizations in the city."

Maggie Martinelli, COO of the Scranton Area Community Foundation, said hunger is a massive issue right now in the community.

"We feel that the best thing is to bring a lot of these organizations together, because there are so many organizations in our community that are really doing this work on a day-to-day basis, but it's hard, because you can feel like you're working in a silo," she said. "So we're trying to kind of remove some of those barriers, make sure people are working together, operating together."

Donations to the Lackawanna Food Policy Council Fund can be made at www.safdn.org/donate.

Kat Bolus is the community reporter for the WVIA News Team. She is a former reporter and columnist at The Times-Tribune, a Scrantonian and cat mom.

You can email Kat at katbolus@wvia.org