Today, twelve percent (12%) of residents in Elkhart County are considered to be Food Insecure; that’s 23,510 individuals who don’t have reliable access to affordable, nutritious food. 

One in eight of our neighbors lives every day with hunger as a constant companion.  ACT Nappanee-Wakarusa announces its exploration of this community issue as the topic of its May 13 Public Service Open-to-All Zoom meeting.    Among the speakers at this meeting who are leaders of county and local organizations working to alleviate this situation will be Mark Mikel and Todd Zeltwanger.

Mark Mikel, Executive Director of Nappanee-based THE CENTER, will discuss how FCDC (Family Christian Development Center) has become the focal point for food access by families in need in the Wa-Nee School District.  In 2020, The Center served 6727 individuals from 2189 households.  118,114 grocery items were given out, and more than 3,700 backpacks with meals provided to tide schoolchildren through weekends.  Mark,  a resident of Wakarusa, has overseen daily operations at The Center since 2014.

Todd Zeltwanger, Director of Fund Development for CULTIVATE FOOD RESCUE, will discuss how this non-profit rescues excess food and repurposes it into healthy, nutritious meals for food insecure children in local elementary school systems.  Each week CULTIVATE delivers six meals in backpacks in order to meet the weekend nutrition needs of food insecure children.  Currently, they provision 800 students, providing a total of 4800 meals a week, using the 100,000 pounds of food rescued monthly.  Todd is a resident of Bremen. He joined CULTIVATE in 2019 to bring his expertise in development and fundraising to the organization.

CULTIVATE benefits from the efforts of MEAT HUNGER, which was started in St Joseph County in 2017 by twins Noah and Emily Zimmer when they were seniors in high school and involved in 4-H animal projects.  Noah Zimmer, now at junior at Indiana University, will discuss how this program works.  In 2020, they provided 86,000 servings of protein from 21,500 pounds of donated meat.
Wrapping up the program is Charles Lanham, owner of Panther Pizza in Nappanee, who donates unsold food to The Center.  Charles will discuss how the local foodservice industry can easily get involved in solving the Food Insecurity problem.