MILFORD, Del. - The Food Bank of Delaware is leaning on its community for donations after 19 shipments were cancelled.
The Trump Administration halted scheduled shipments of food aid and funding through the USDA’s Emergency Food Assistance Program which received criticism from Congresswoman Sarah McBride (D) who represents Delaware.
Parents and seniors often come to the Food Bank of Delaware when trying to make ends meet, but now it's the food bank itself that might have a hard time stocking the shelves.
Kim Turner, vice president of communications for the Food Bank of Delaware, says this recent change will drastically cut down how many families they can help.
"We have been informed that 19 shipments of food that we were anticipating receiving between April and July have been canceled. This is about 29 percent of the loads that we were expected to receive," said Turner.
Turner says the shipments were supposed to be received through the USDA emergency food assistance program.
"This means that we will have 900,000 less meals to serve our community. So the people who will be impacted are people who are in need of food assistance."
Stephanie Harris says her and her family have volunteered with the food bank. She says the food bank has helped everyone from the homeless to the boys and girls club.
"We relied on them during covid because they were delivering it to the schools for the people that, you know, didn't have food in their homes, the prices of groceries is just skyrocketing. So how are people going to eat that can't afford it?" Harris shared.
Now, Turner is leaning on the support of her community.
"We really want people of all backgrounds to just come together and work together to meet the needs of our community," Turner explained.
Turner did clear up questions about covid relief funding for the food bank.
"A lot of the pandemic assistance programs ended many years ago. We haven't been receiving pandemic assistance in a while. This was an additional program. The food bank has really we've had a great partnership with USDA for many, many years. This was not associated with any pandemic program." said Turner.
She also says they did not have much time to prepare for this change.
"We didn't receive 60 days notice. We learned about it last week."
With roughly one third of the food they were expecting not showing up, the food bank will be reliant now more than ever on donations from people on Delmarva.