The San Antonio Food Bank will hold two holiday-themed distribution events on Friday and Tuesday, with Tuesday’s event serving as the nonprofit’s largest holiday giveaway of the season, Chief Resource Officer Michael Guerra said.
While Friday’s mega-mobile distribution is no longer taking registrants, Tuesday’s event is only half full and still accepting registrations online. Pre-registration is required, according to the food bank website.
“[Friday’s] event will be at the Alamodome and we’ll be serving about 1,500 San Antonio families,” Guerra said. “Tuesday will be at the AT&T Center, and we are taking 2,000 families. We are at about 1,000 right now.”
Low income families or families that have been impacted by the coronavirus pandemic are eligible to register for Tuesday’s event, which is sponsored by H-E-B and Valero.
These two events are a culmination of the highly publicized work the food bank has done throughout the pandemic. It has been holding on-site food distributions every Tuesday and Friday for the past several months and overall, has served more than 625,000 people since March, which is the equivalent to one out of every four people in the region. Currently, more than 120,000 people are receiving weekly assistance, more than double the number of clients served before the pandemic.
Friday’s distribution event will provide each family more than 150 pounds of food, including bread, produce, meat, milk, and canned goods, as well as a holiday surprise sponsored by Bank of America, Guerra said.
Tuesday’s giveaway event also will include 150 pounds of food and some non-food holiday-themed items such as blankets, food and gas gift cards, PPE, and coloring books and crayons for children. Because of the event Tuesday, Community Labs will not be conducting COVID-19 tests on the AT&T Center on Tuesday, but will resume tests on Wednesday, said Mary Ullmann Japhet of Japhet Media.
Both events will have more than 200 volunteers and will include multiple stations for each family.
Correction: The headline and article have been updated to reflect the correct scale of Tuesday’s giveaway event.
