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After 32 years Terrebonne Churches United food bank is moving to a new, permanent location. TCU food bank has been serving Terrebonne Parish since 1987, but never owned their own space to operate out of. The new facility is double the size of their current operations, and TCU hopes to be fully operational by Feb. 2021.
Executive Director Lawrence DeHart explained that the move will not only benefit the food bank but also serve as an improvement in how they are able to reach those in need.
“Last year, we did 1.2 million pounds of food. This year, we will cross 2.4 million. Last year, we did 10,500 people. This year, we were going to cross over 21,000. And when you start getting into that volume and that heavy load the new facility will allow me to bring in and deal with a larger volume of items to help provide better resources and more food,” DeHart said.
TCU’s current facility is about 2,800 square feet with only one office that six people work out of. TCU is also the only local food bank that operates full-time, Monday- Friday from 8:00 AM to 3:00 PM, and Saturday from 8:00 AM to 12:00 PM.
“This isn’t something we do once a month or occasionally. We help people here every day. What the new facility is going to allow us to not only continue that but to do it in a safe manner. With the new facility, we’re going to be able to have food come in the back part of the building, and we can offload supplies while we have a distribution session going on outside,” DeHart said.
Thanks to the help of State Representative Jerome “Zee” Zeringue and State Senator Mike Fesi, DeHart said they were able to secure a $100,000 grant from the state in order to purchase their own permanent facility.
“The TCU food bank receives no regular reoccurring funding and we just deal with most of the donations and grants that our decision, especially in this year of COVID has been to put the resources that we have towards helping those in need. And we were blessed this year that we got a grant from the state of Louisiana,” DeHart said.
The ribbon cutting ceremony is scheduled to take place at their new location, 922 Sunset Ave. in Houma on Feb. 23, 2021. For more information on TCU food bank, visit https://tcufoodbank.org.
Photo courtesy of TCU social media.
