Feeding South Dakota distribution on display in Redfield

REDFIELD, S.D. (Dakota News Now) – The non-profit Feeding South Dakota is a massive social service organization that serves each of the state’s 66 counties once a month.

Weather permitting, every South Dakota county gets a visit. The story, by the numbers, was provided by Stacey Andernacht of the Feeding South Dakota organization.

Stacey said, “In South Dakota, nearly 73,000 people are food insecure, and that means that they are unable to have access to the food that they need to have a nutritious lifestyle. Our mobile food distribution is hosted right now in 119 communities across the state, every single month.”

Funding is a big issue with these social service programs.

Stacey continued, “Feeding South Dakota is funded through private donations, along with some grant and foundation opportunities that we apply for. Other than the food items that we receive through the USDA commodity programs, we don’t receive any funding from the state.”

Thursday was the distribution event for Redfield in Spink County. Penny Ihnen is the Co-director of the Tri-County Food Pantry, and she talked about the impact of the program.

Penny related, “We’ve had people say that they couldn’t make it from month to month if it wasn’t for this mobile food truck that comes. It’s a blessing to them.”

Both Ihnen and Andernacht say that the Feeding South Dakota program wouldn’t exist without the incredible volunteers. Leonard Deibert, one of those volunteers, explained how he got started.

Leonard said, “The wife and I were walking down by the Armory one time when the Feeding South Dakota truck come there and they were helping the people and we walked over and asked them, ‘What’s going on?’ And they explained the program to us and we asked, ‘Well, do you need any help?’ and he said, ‘Sure, we can use help,’ and we’ve been going back and helping them probably three or four years now. We enjoy it, it’s a good program, and the people enjoy it.”

Occasionally, the weather gets in the way of this distribution but, for the most part, every county in South Dakota has one of the 119 stops on the Feeding South Dakota route.

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