{"id":200779,"date":"2026-03-21T22:06:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-21T22:06:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/200779\/"},"modified":"2026-03-21T22:06:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-21T22:06:07","slug":"ocoee-food-bank-prepares-to-deliver-60000-pounds-of-food","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/200779\/","title":{"rendered":"Ocoee food bank prepares to deliver 60,000 pounds of food"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>OCOEE, Fla. \u2014\u00a0A Central Florida food bank is working to help hundreds of families as the need for food assistance continues to grow.<\/p>\n<p>What You Need To Know<\/p>\n<p>More than 60,000 pounds of food will be delivered to 1,000 families<br \/>\n<br \/>Distribution will reach areas including Ocoee, Apopka and West Orlando<br \/>\n<br \/>Food bank now serves about 24,000 families monthly, nearly double from 2024<br \/>\n<br \/>One in seven people and one in five children face hunger in Florida<\/p>\n<p>At the Southeastern Food Bank in Ocoee, volunteers are packing hundreds of boxes filled with items like pasta, canned goods, produce and household supplies. The effort is part of the organization\u2019s Food for Families program, which will deliver groceries directly to 1,000 households on April 4.<\/p>\n<p>This year\u2019s distribution will include more than 60,000 pounds of food, reaching families across Ocoee, Winter Garden, West Orlando, Apopka and parts of East Lake County.<\/p>\n<p>For many volunteers, the work is personal.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt makes you realize how fortunate you are and all the things that you\u2019ve been blessed with that honors,\u201d said volunteer Shelly Mhadeo.<\/p>\n<p>Others say they\u2019ve seen the impact of food insecurity firsthand.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHonestly, it\u2019s really sad. Seeing my parents go through that growing up\u2026 it\u2019s honestly really, really sad,\u201d said volunteer Kallista Ramos, a senior at Olympia High School.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.feedingamerica.org\/hunger-in-america\/florida\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">According to Feeding America<\/a>, 3.2 million people in Florida are facing hunger \u2014 totaling one in seven people and one in five children.<\/p>\n<p>Organizers say rising costs are a major factor behind the growing demand.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOne place we went to, they had a tea bag in their house. That\u2019s all the food they had,\u201d said Mark Anthony, founder and CEO of Southeastern Food Bank. \u201cChoosing between medicine and food is really pretty tough.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The food bank says it is now serving about 24,000 families each month, nearly double what it saw in 2024.<\/p>\n<p>Anthony says volunteers are critical to making sure families receive the help they need, especially for deliveries.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe really need the volunteers to come help us so we can achieve our mission, because we can\u2019t do it by ourselves,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>Volunteers like Ramos say it\u2019s a simple way to make a difference.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI would say do it 100%. If you have time, might as well help out while you can,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>The Southeastern Food Bank is still looking for volunteers to help deliver food to families across the region.<\/p>\n<p>To sign up, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.southeasternfoodbank.com\/volunteer\/food-for-families\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">visit the organization\u2019s website<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"OCOEE, Fla. \u2014\u00a0A Central Florida food bank is working to help hundreds of families as the need for&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":200780,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[1188,3949,4369,1192,115,1335,139,141,140],"class_list":["post-200779","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-orlando","tag-app-homelessness","tag-bryanna-howard","tag-food-insecurity-and-hunger","tag-homelessness","tag-news","tag-orange-county","tag-orlando","tag-orlando-headlines","tag-orlando-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200779","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=200779"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200779\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/200780"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=200779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=200779"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=200779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}