WRITTEN BY KATY RUTH CAMP
Kindness T h e l o g i s t i c s o f
NEW INITIATIVE COBB COMMUNITY FOOD FLEET CONNECTS
BUSINESSES AND NONPROFITS TO PROCURE, STORE AND
DISTRIBUTE FOOD FOR THOSE IN NEED
OBB COUNTY IS HOME to many
nonprofits who share the same mission:
feeding those in need. But with dwindling
storage space, limited resources to deliver
food from storage and disruption to supply
chains, the coronavirus pandemic has created
challenges for those nonprofits in getting the
food from point A to the mouths of those in
need.
So, in mid-March, Cobb Community
Foundation President and CEO Shari Martin
reached out to United Way of Metro Atlanta -
NW Region and Cobb Collaborative to assist
in pulling together a group of nonprofit,
school district and county government leaders.
Those leaders then shared the challenges each
group and their constituencies were facing,
made known the resources each group had
available and determined the best path
forward to meet needs in Cobb County.
The original group, labeled the Cobb
Crisis Response Team, began with daily 7:55
a.m. calls on March 23, which have been
slowly whittled down to one call a week. One
of the many outcomes resulting from this
group’s efforts is that, in an environment where
over 100,000 Cobb Countians have lost their
jobs, more than half of them being in the
lowest paying industries, Cobb’s nonprofits are
providing boxes of food to over 5,000 families
each week.
The result was the Cobb Community
Food Fleet, an initiative where they have
brought together Noonday Association,
Athena Farms, the Atlanta Braves, Ryder
Trucks, S.A. White Oil Company, Mobilized
Fuels and numerous Cobb nonprofits to
ensure that lack of storage space does not
C
BELOW:
A Ryder Truck
at Truist Park
44 COBB LIFE | JULY 2020