The City of St. Cloud held a ribbon cutting Thursday morning, along with the Osceola Council on Aging, for its new mobile food pantry, a refrigerated box truck that will assist those still experiencing food insecurity in the St. Cloud community.
“The City awarded a $103,000 Community Development Block Grant to our partners at the Osceola Council on Aging, to help them purchase this refrigerated truck, which enables them to continue providing this critical service to our residents,” said City Council Member Kolby Urban, who presided over the ribbon cutting.”
The St. Cloud Food Pantry has been serving city residents for more than 30 years. For much of that time, it ran as an independent, not-for-profit organization under the direction of Tammi Madison.
Due to ongoing struggles to find enough volunteers to keep it operating in a post-COVID world, the Food Pantry’s Board voted in 2021 to close the pantry.
Tammi Madison was very instrumental in working with the community and the City to find a way to ensure our residents were not cut off from access to this vital service, and the Osceola County on Aging stepped in to fill that gap.
Wendy Ford, President and CEO of the Osceola Council on Aging, noted that the food pantry distributed food to about 12,500 St. Cloud residents last year, for a total of more than one million pounds of food.
Food distribution in St. Cloud is scheduled each Thursday. For more information or to apply to receive assistance, visit Osceola Council on Aging’s website at https://osceolagenerations.org/food-pantry-registration/
