More Than a Meal

Team members: Leila Aziz, Jami Emory, Frank Fisher, Nichole Grant, Jon Joffe, Scott Powell, Russell Shepherd, Rhondda Thomas

Over 45,000 people in Greenville County are food insecure, a term that is defined by the limited or uncertain availability of nutritionally adequate and safe food. A map of the entire county shows concentrated areas of food insecurity around downtown Greenville (Nicholtown, City View, Gantt, Conestee, and the White Horse Road corridor), Mauldin, and Travelers Rest. While there are many complexities to around the issue of food insecurity and hunger, one thing is clear- people need access to healthy food.

Several organizations throughout Greenville County focus on feeding the hungry, rescuing food that would otherwise be wasted and delivering it to agencies that help those in need, providing after-school meals to children, and hosting regular soup kitchen hours each week.

Project Host, located in downtown Greenville, uses food as a tool to nourish the hungry and train the unemployed. Beginning with a soup kitchen out of St. Andrew’s Church in 1981, Project Host had a simple call to those in-need: “No sermons. No singing. Just soup and sandwiches. Free.” Over the past 40 years, Project Host has grown significantly and now provides a soup kitchen Sundays-Fridays from 11am-12pm. They also serve children through an after-school program at their downtown building on Academy Street. Project Host has also expanded to include an urban garden (supplying 2,000 lbs. of food annually), a bakery (offering ready-to-eat family meals and baked goods to local restaurants), a social enterprise food truck that also provides hundreds of meals weekly to food-insecure areas, and a culinary school that prepares students for food industry employment.

More Than a Meal’s mission was to assist Project Host with expanding their food distribution into northern Greenville County with sustainable community partners. The goal was to help Project Host connect with organizations around Travelers Rest to provide food for meal preparation and to host distribution events in the area. More Than a Meal considered partners’ locations, site support and volunteer base, infrastructure, knowledge of and trust in the community, and commitment to long-term success. More Than a Meal facilitated connections between Project Host and two churches in Travelers Rest: Maranatha Fellowship and Trailside Church.

Project Host provided food, both sack lunches and hot meals, at four different events hosted by the churches in April and May. All parties have continued collaborations planned for the future. The churches can focus their efforts on the logistics of serving their communities and divert funds from food purchases to care packages, blankets, clothing, and items for children. Project Host has been able to forge into relationships in northern Greenville County and significantly increase their lunch service and evening meals provisions.