ORLANDO, Fla. — As we enter week five of the government shutdown, local leaders are hoping to address the fallout that has come with it.

Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings held a press conference on Wednesday with local organizations as they try to tackle the possible loss of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, on Saturday for the more than 175,000 Orange County residents who rely on it each month.

What You Need To Know

SNAP benefits are expected to be suspended across the country and in Florida on Saturday if the government shutdown doesn’t end

Several local organizations shared their efforts to help residents and called for community support

Demings says he plans to write a letter to Gov. Ron DeSantis to see if he can tap into state emergency funds to help those in need

Orange County leaders fear that they may not be able to handle how dire the situation may be if local organizations can’t get the funding needed to address the need.

Organizations like Second Harvest Food Bank of Central Florida say they do what they can to help fill the gap as they provided more than 82 million meals to Central Florida residents, including 35 million for Orange County residents.

But even still, they know that they have major shoes to fill to rival how helpful SNAP is.

“But for every meal that the food bank provides, SNAP provides nine,” Second Harvest Food Bank of Central Florida’s Director of Advocacy and Government Relations Stephanie Palacios. “That is simply a gap that we cannot fill by Saturday.”

But Palacios says that with every community investment, they will source additional food and move it through their 395 partner agencies in Central Florida.

The Heart of Florida United Way urges residents to utilize their 24/7, 365-day-a-year 211 service to speak with highly trained employees to help people find the resources they might need.

“Every one of those connections is a network of nearly 3,000 verified community resources across Central Florida,” explained Heart of Florida United Way’s Senior CP of Community Impact Kelly Astro. “This includes food assistance, housing assistance, mental healthcare and much more.”

Astro says that help is just a text or phone call away and that they have made 1,600 referrals in the last 90 days and with more expecting moving forward.

But with Nov. 1, just days away, these local organizations are asking for immediate community help.

“It isn’t good enough to just say you need a can of food to bring to work,” said Christian Service Center for the Homeless Executive Director Eric Gray. “We need every business in the community, we need every church, every mosque, every temple, every little league team, every neighborhood association, and every Boy Scout and Girl Scout troop to be organizing food drives right now.”

And Maor Demings is calling on the state to help to ensure that they can help as many people as possible in case the shutdown does not end by the weekend.

“I will be sending a letter to Gov. DeSantis asking the governor to do what he can do to access any state emergency funds,” Demings shared.

Demings says he is also going to ask the Board of County Commissioners to allocate an additional $1 million from their budget to assist with any issues that could impact families in Orange County because of the suspension of SNAP.