The Hunt Club campus of Venture Church in Hattiesburg was the place to be Thursday as more than 200 volunteers showed up to fight hunger in Mississippi.
They came for the third annual March of the Mayors in support of Extra Table, a non-profit organization dedicated to feeding hungry families in Mississippi.
Volunteers filled more than 2,200 boxes of name-brand food products for distribution to approximately 65 charities and foodbanks across the state.
“This is the third year for March of the Mayors in the Hattiesburg area, but it started originally in 2020 on the Coast, when Covid slowed everything down during Mardi Gras,” said Martha Allen, executive director for Extra Table.
“Now, in four short years, we’ve gone from one small area on the Coast to 51 cities across the state. This year, we added six cities in the Delta and seven cities in north Mississippi.”
Extra Table was organized by Hattiesburg restauranteur Robert St. John in 2009 when he was made aware that several charities were having problems keeping food in stock.
He approached Sysco, his wholesale distributor, and put together the organization to get food more efficiently to those who needed it. Sysco agreed, and for 10 years, the company was the sole provider and distributor of Extra Table.
However, in the wake of skyrocketing prices due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Extra Table changed its approach, fundraising to purchase healthy, shelf-stable food to be delivered monthly to food pantries and soup kitchens across the state.
The March of the Mayors was started to offer the public in Hattiesburg and surrounding communities the opportunity to come together for a box-packing party and to increase awareness of hunger in Mississippi.
“We look forward to this,” said Darrell Berry, mayor of Wiggins. “We love this event. Wiggins loves giving, we’re a giving county and we love to help people. So here we are.”
The need is quite real. Statistically, Mississippi ranks first in the nation in obesity and second in the nation in both poverty and hunger. Approximately one in 10 working Mississippians lack sufficient food for their physical needs.
Hunger Free America estimates that 12 percent of working adults in Mississippi live in households that can’t always afford enough food, and nearly half a million are food insecure in Mississippi.
The problem is even more acute for the young and the elderly.
It is estimated that as many as 18 percent of Mississippians over age 65 have faced the threat of hunger and are monthly participants in food pantries.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture reported in the 2019-20 school year that some 357,000 Mississippi school children were eligible for free or reduced-price breakfast and lunch.
Hunger can also be an issue for college students, as well, which is why a group of students from William Carey University came to help out on Thursday.
“I came with a group of students here, and we came to serve,” said Adria Piazza, who is originally from Vicksburg but now works as director of student activities for WCU. “Extra Table has donated to our Cobbler Closet, which is our new food pantry that we opened up this year at the college. They’ve donated to us, so we’re here to give back to them.”
And they weren’t the only college kids who showed up. A group of nearly a dozen football players from Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College came all the way up from the Perkinston campus to fill boxes.
“We support the local community, we heard about this event, and it’s a wonderful thing to be a part of,” said Brett Shufelt, assistant football coach at MGCCC.
“We try to get involved with some community events around Stone County and the area, so this came up, we talked to our administration about it, and we jumped in there. So, we’re proud to be here.”
Some volunteers made up boxes in preparation for Thursday’s event, and others manned various stations handing out food such as granola bars, cans of tuna, sacks of beans and rice, Ramen noodles, and cans of fruit.
Most volunteers were handed empty boxes and went from station to station assembly-line fashion, then handed off the filled boxes to other volunteers who sealed them and set them on pallets for distribution.
“Volunteers are really the drivers for this event,” said Allen. “We have volunteers from a number of corporate sponsors, just people who come in wanting to help. Some of our mayors get in line and help fill food boxes.”
It worked so efficiently that the whole project took less than two hours to complete.
Most of Thursday’s volunteers came from various companies and civic clubs in the Hattiesburg area, including Merit Wesley Health, Hancock Whitney Bank, the Hattiesburg Elks Club, and Hood Industries, just to name a few.
“We’ve been involved with Extra Table for, I guess, seven years now, and the last three years it’s turned into a packing party,” said Freddie Triplett, business development director of Spire, the Hattiesburg gas company that is one of Extra Table’s regional corporate sponsors.
“Our involvement is trying to help with the community. This is a great endeavor. Extra Table is a great charitable organization. This is just a way we can get together for a few hours, pack about 2,000 boxes, have a little fellowship, and show a little goodwill.”
Volunteers are essential to the process because Allen is one of just two staffers employed by Extra Table. Unless specifically earmarked for administrative costs, all donations go directly to purchase food from national wholesalers.
Extra Table food is delivered to its various charities and food pantries the last week of each month. That means those food charities don’t have to stockpile food in hopes of having enough for the year. They also have the ability to increase the amount of food distributed in the summer months when children are out of school and unable to obtain meals at school.
Among the charities that Extra Table distributes food to in the immediate Hattiesburg area are Bread Basket, Christian Services, Eagle’s Nest Food Pantry at the University of Southern Mississippi, Edwards Street Mission, the Children’s Task Force in Petal, and the Sumrall UMC Food Pantry.
“There is definitely a need here in Mississippi,” said Triplett. “You can read up on it. Sometimes we don’t even think about food insecurity. But even in our state and in our colleges, you’ll see they have food pantries.
“So this is a great need, and this is a way we can maybe fill that gap and serve our community.”
