Regional Food Bank Expands Facilities

OKLAHOMA CITY -- The Regional Food Bank of Oklahoma is on the way to reaching their goal. The goal is to completely wipe out hunger in Oklahoma. And although there's still a way to go, expanding the facility will make a difference.

Construction for the expansion is complete. The Food Bank won't publicly unveil the add-on until next month.

There's no time to waste, when it comes to getting hungry Oklahoman's their next meal. Volunteers are already taking over the expanded space to fill up sacks that will go directly to kids.

"A lot of time we don't think about it," Rodney Bivens with the Regional Food Bank of Oklahoma said. "School children have school breakfast and school lunch, so what happens in the summer?"

In the summer, the meal is the same, but this year the building the meal is packed in, is much bigger.

"When we first started out, there wasn't room except for two groups, and then it was very crowded," volunteer Eleanor Bedingfield said.

Now, there's 36,000 new square feet to work in. That includes new space to fit 55 semi truck loads of food and a new freezer to stock boxes full of the millions of meals that the Food Bank hands out on a daily basis. The building expansion will allow for 2.75 million additional meals to be handed out this year.

"All the funds came from people in Oklahoma who, again, literally stepped up to the plate in providing food to people," Peggy Garrett with the Presbyterian Urban Mission said.

The food is going to people who may not otherwise be able to eat if it weren't for the food bank expansion and the volunteers inside.

"Everything that is done by these volunteers trickles down to the families that we see every day that are really struggling to put food on their table," Garrett said.

Six or seven groups of volunteers can be working in the new space at the same time. That adds up to a lot of volunteers helping to feed the Oklahoma's hungriest.

Food Bank officials say they expect the expansion to accommodate any increase in demand in the future.