New truck will help Etowah food bank's mission to get food to community
The Etowah Community Food Bank has unveiled a new set of wheels.
The organization, with funding from the City of Gadsden and the Department of Housing and Urban Development, has a new truck that will be used by local agencies and churches to transport food from the Community Food Bank of Central Alabama in Birmingham to Etowah County.
A ribbon-cutting was held outside City Hall following the Nov. 7 City Council meeting.
Marie Johnson, the food bank’s executive director, spoke to the council and likened the process of acquiring the truck to “birthing a baby — it took a pretty good while to get it.”
She said the idea generated when she came out of retirement — she has a distinguished résumé of community service including 16 years as the Family Success Center’s first director — to lead the food bank, at the request of Circuit Clerk Cassandra Johnson, her daughter-in-law and the organization’s board chair.
Johnson said both Kent Back, now president of the City Council, and Lee Bean, director of the Catholic Center of Concern, told her the agency’s transportation situation was unsafe and had to be addressed.
She thanked Mayor Craig Ford and the council, and Ruth Moffatt, the city’s director of diversity, equity and inclusion who facilitated getting the HUD funds, for "stepping in and finishing the project.”
Johnson said the truck will “save thousands of dollars that can now be put into food,” adding, “We need food in this community; that is my mission. And we’re doing everything we can to get food into this community.”
Agencies and church partners who have been paying up to $180 a month to go get food will now only be required to put gasoline in the truck. That will “make a tremendous difference in this community,” Johnson said before Tuesday’s event.
Johnson was accompanied to the council meeting by government students from Westbrook Christian School, who earlier visited the Catholic Center of Concern, the Salvation Army and the Etowah Baptist Mission Center.
This article originally appeared on The Gadsden Times: Etowah food bank unveils new truck
