FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Roadrunner Food Bank

CONTACT: Sonya Warwick

Direct: 505-349-8678

Cell: 505-269-4775

FOOD BANK'S MOBILE FOOD PANTRY

VISITS CUBA, NM

Cuba, NM - August 18, 2008 – The Mobile Food Pantry, a program of Roadrunner Food Bank will make its first visit to Cuba to provide food to those in need of food assistance.  The Mobile Food Pantry will stop be in Cuba on August 20.

The stop will be at the Rock Springs Holiness Mission on Highway 197, mile markers 29 just outside of Cuba.  Volunteers will begin distributing food at 10:30 am.  The location will receive 5,000 pounds of food that will provide supplemental food to approximately 100 families.

The Mobile Food Pantry is a new program of Roadrunner Food Bank and started this past June. It delivers to areas where individuals may not have access to food support programs or where food pantries or feeding programs do not exist.  Roadrunner Food Bank partners with local community organizations throughout New Mexico who sponsor the initiative to areas that are underserved.

Melody Wattenbarger, Executive Director at Roadrunner Food Bank said, “The Mobile Food Pantry is important for our large rural state and essential to the growing numbers of working poor.  Communities and areas that do not have access to food programs such as food pantries and soup kitchens now can rely on the Mobile Food Pantry to bring fresh produce and staple foods directly to people who are hungry and have nowhere else to turn for food.”

The Mobile Food Pantry is available to communities in nine New Mexico counties including Bernalillo, Catron, Chaves, Eddy, Lincoln, Sandoval, Socorro, Torrance and Valencia. Groups, businesses and individuals are invited to sponsor one or more Mobile Food Pantry sites.  Wattenbarger continued, “Scheduling the Mobile Pantry is easy.  A sponsoring organization simply has to find a location with good parking in their community, let the community know it is arriving, and find volunteers to help distribute the food.  Roadrunner Food Bank takes care of getting it to the community in need.”

Roadrunner Food Bank serves more than 240,000 hungry New Mexicans every year.  National statistics indicate that one in six New Mexicans is hungry and does not know where their next meal is coming from.  Wattenbarger said, “Through the Mobile Food Pantry, we are able to extend our services to reach people in communities that we may have never served.  100,000 people in New Mexico continue to go hungry every year and this program will help us reach those we haven’t been able to reach before.”

For more information or to schedule a Mobile Pantry visit, please contact Roadrunner Food Bank at 505-247-2052 or visit our website at www.rrfb.org.

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Roadrunner Food Bank of New Mexico is New Mexico’s largest non-profit organization dedicated to ending hunger.  Through its statewide network of 600 partner agencies and six regional food banks, Roadrunner Food Bank distributes more than 16 million pounds of food annually to approximately 240,000 New Mexicans in need.  Every dollar donated yields $12 worth of food.  Roadrunner Food Bank is the only New Mexico member of America’s Second Harvest—the Nation’s Food Bank Network.  In the 28 years since it was founded, Roadrunner Food Bank has distributed more than 165 million pounds of food statewide.  For more information about Roadrunner Food Bank and its programs visit www.rrfb.org