400 NoVA Families Received Boxes Of Essentials During Summer Food And Resource Rally

RESTON, VA — StarKist, Feed the Children and Cornerstones teamed up on Friday morning to distribute 25-pound boxes of shelf-stable food and essential hygiene products to 400 Northern Virginia families in need.

Volunteers and representatives from those three organizations joined members of Floris United Methodist Church in Herndon to distribute the boxes as part of the Fourth Annual Summer Food and Resource Rally.

“All of this is possible because of the StarKist’s sponsorship,” said Julie Laird Davis of Feed the Children. “This is our 20th event together, and we're so excited to be here today to be able to share protein from StarKist and really have their volunteers come out and serve the community.”

In 2022, StarKist moved its headquarters to Reston and the annual food donation is just one of the things the company has done to support the community where many of its employees live.

Related: Food Bank Expects 50% Cut In Food To Distribute In Fairfax County

“It’s really important that we give out to the community here locally,” said Michael Merritt, StarKist’s head of marketing. “Food insecurity is a huge issue throughout the country, and particularly here in this part of Virginia. For us, it's critical that we be able to help out.”

While Friday’s event served the local community, StarKist also assists communities across the country who are also facing food insecurity, according to Merritt. The company will be participating in another Feed the Children event later this month in Bentonville, Arkansas.

The annual Summer Food and Resource Rally is not only a great opportunity to highlight the generosity of StarKist, Feed the Children, Floris United Methodist Church, and Cornerstones, it also helps to raise awareness of food insecurity in the region, according to Kerrie Wilson, executive director of Cornerstones.

Related: StarKist Teams With Local Nonprofits To Feed 400 Families In Reston

In March, the Trump Administration announced it was cutting $500 million in funding to USDA’s Local Food Purchasing Program, which bought food directly from farmers to be distributed to food banks across the country, according to the Associated Press.

“We're going through some pretty tough times,” Wilson said. “Everything's uncertain. As things are playing out, a lot of the federal resources that we depend on, that state and county governments depend on to serve the community, we're waiting to see the other shoe drop.”

Deb Haynes, executive director of Food for Others in Merrifield, recently told Patch that her organization expected to see a minimum of a 50 percent reduction in the food that it received from the federal government to distribute to the community.

The Capital Area Food Bank worked directly with the USDA to obtain food purchased from farmers, which was then distributed to food banks across the DMV, like the one operated by Food for Others.

“What they are reporting is that about half of the orders they have placed for that emergency food have been canceled,” Haynes said.

As part of its food rescue, Cornerstones operates a warehouse in Sterling that serves two small food pantries in Loudoun and Fairfax counties.

“With our food hub, we're seeing the same thing that Capital Area Food Bank and Food for Others is,” Wilson said. “That means we can't get that food out to everybody.”

Unlike the other food banks, Cornerstones has historically relied on donations from the community and its gleaning program, which gathers food from local farmers markets, to distribute to families in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly called food stamps.

“We have the highest number of SNAP households in the market,” Wilson said. “So we've been able to supplement with the fresh produce. We still get what we need for the staple foods — for now.”

The budget bill passed last month by the U.S. House of Representatives includes large cuts to SNAP. On top of that higher inflation and job uncertainty is already affecting the amount of donations Cornerstones has been receiving.

“From a donation standpoint, I know A Simple Gesture has seen in its monthly pickups, that they have had families that tell them, ‘I'm one of the workers, federal workers, that lost a job. I still want to give, but it's not going to be as much,'” Wilson said. “That is absolutely what we're seeing.”

Cornerstones offers a number of different ways for the community to support its food programs, including donations of food and money, volunteering, employer match and giving programs, and setting up a fundraiser.