Lucas Oil Stadium turns into food distribution center during pandemic

INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — Community organizations are coming together for hungry families across central Indiana. It’s a big effort by the Salvation Army and the Midwest Food Bank to help feed families whose lives have been turned upside down by COVID-19.

“The urgency and the challenge that we’re facing right now with COVID-19 is that supply lines are not what they used to be,” said Lt. Vinal Lee with Salvation Army of Indianapolis. “People aren’t able to get the resources that they’re used to and you have families that for the first time in their life without a paycheck and so the bills are coming in, the food demand is still there but there’s no income to be able to purchase that food.”

The Midwest Food Bank had 480,000 meals to move, but they needed a lot of space to pack the food and get it ready for families in need. They started looking at buildings they could turn into a giant food distribution center.

“We talked about the Indiana Convention Center and we talked about Lucas Oil,” said Midwest Food Bank founder John Whitaker. “They stepped right up and said we want to help our community and let you use our place.”

More than 100 volunteers offered to help, but maybe no group was more crucial than the men and women of the National Guard.

“This operation would not be possible if it wasn’t for the support of the National Guard,” Lee said. “They have put a number of hours into building boxes, organizing this warehouse and making it happen.”

“The National Guard along with the Civil Air Patrol, it just doesn’t get better than that,” Whitaker added.

The goal was to fill 10,000 boxes of food, which was a lot more than they expected. The groups were able to put together 6,473 boxes with ending the day just before 4:30 p.m. on Friday. With their manpower, they expected to finish with a lot less for a day’s work.

However, Whitaker looks at the race against hunger and the COVID-19 pandemic as a “marathon” and not a sprint and they’ll need the community’s help to get to the finish line.

“We’re spending 200,000 dollars more than our budget to get this food out to our community,” he said. “We’re going to be in this boat for about a year, but If a million people gave us a dollar, we could have a million dollars to do this twice again.”

With everybody working together, they plan to keep Hoosier families fed until this crisis is over. No matter how long it takes.

Click here to get involved with the effort with the Salvation Army or here to find out how to volunteer with the Midwest Food Bank.

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