A Strong Finish to #HungerActionMonth with Blue Cross Blue Shield

Hunger Action Month is an important time for communities to bring dedicated attention and effort to the fight against food insecurity, and our friends at Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina (BCBS) turned out in a big way to cap off this year’s push. 

On September 30, our central distribution center in Raleigh welcomed over 150 Blue Cross Blue Shield volunteers to sort and pack food kits headed out to our network of local pantries and delivery programs. The group was so large that the assembly line stretched across the full length of our 85,000 sq ft warehouse. In a single shift, BCBS volunteers assembled enough kits to fuel more than 41,000 meals for local families!  

The support from Blue Cross Blue Shield comes at a critical time. Pantries and meal sites throughout the region are reporting as much as 60% more visits from community members in recent months — and that’s at a time when hunger was already at a near 20-year high.  Neighbors from all walks of life are facing impossible choices: a parent laid off from work who can’t afford childcare, a senior needing $500 a month for medicine, and a college student who doesn’t know if they should buy dinner or books. 

Through ongoing volunteer engagement, financial support, and growing investments in ‘Health Through Food’ efforts, BCBS is helping neighbors succeed and thrive by improving access to nutritious food. 

Our work would not be possible without Blue Cross Blue Shield and their dedicated volunteers. 

Just one large-scale ‘volunteer takeover’ can fuel more meals than a week of smaller shifts. This means more food is available for more than 607,000 neighbors who face hunger in our area.    

We are always working as hard as we can to get as much food out to our community — and we really could not do that so quickly without our incredible volunteers. With support from friends like Blue Cross, volunteer takeover events like these are especially important because large groups show up to support the work and give back.

– Sadie Fuentes, Volunteer Engagement Manager

Like the team at Blue Cross Blue Shield, we firmly believe that access to healthy food is critical to health and well-being. 

At a time when the cost of food and other essentials remains out of reach for far too many families in North Carolina, our shared work is more important than ever. Our friend Lori Taylor, who leads Health Through Food efforts at BCBS, spoke with media outlets about the importance of our partnership.  

We have been partners with the Food Bank of Central & Eastern North Carolina for a long, long time, and we’ve built this partnership in many different ways. Having multiple connection points strengthens what we do together — and the warmth and the feeling of both the Food Bank team and our Blue Cross volunteers is just amazing.

– Lori Taylor, BCBS Health Through Food Director