County Service Hub Spotlight!

During the month of January, the Food Resources Team spent time visiting some of the County Service Hubs and seeing what they were up to! There are seven hubs across the county, all made up of community and faith-based organizations that work closely with the Department of Health and Human Services to provide food and other essential resources to our neighbors.  

The seven hubs were created during the COVID-19 pandemic as a way for the county, in partnership with local organizations, to further support it’s residents. While the pandemic has faded away, the impact of it is still very much here and the need for food assistance is just as great. The seven hubs are still an important pillar of food resources in Montgomery County. The county is currently in the process of reviewing the proposals submitted by the hubs for the next round of contracts!

At these visits, we were interested in learning more about how they run their distributions, what some of the most popular foods and services were, seeing their storage capacity, and hearing about how things are going and what they would like to see more of. 

The first visit we had was to the Gaithersburg CARES Hub at Seneca Creek Community Church to see one of their food distributions. We met with Rocio, the food program manager. She gave us a tour of the hub which included their impressive cold storage capacity! This hub receives food and produce boxes from our partner, the Capital Area Food Bank. Some of their most popular requests were for kitchen staples like oil, rice, and beans.  

Next, we visited Randi, the outreach coordinator for the Clifton Park Baptist Church Hub. The distribution here was very lively! They even had someone playing guitar in the background! The CPBC Hub serves 4,500 families each month and participants are allowed to visit every other week due to high demand. In addition to the food received from the Capital Area Food Bank, they also have a small hydroponic operation in the church growing greens and peppers that supplements food for 50 families each week! The CPBC Hub recently received a grant that allows participants to get free blood pressure testing while visiting. 

Our next visit was to the Interfaith Works Hub. This service hub provides a variety of resources to Montgomery County residents. Some of them being a clothing store, a children’s area, and small library as well as their usual free choice market. While we were there, we got to see the giant pile of clothing donations! And they had an amazing group of volunteers working to sort through these for their clothing store.   

Up next, and our final visit for the month of January was to the Hughes United Methodist Church County Service Hub. We got to see a tour of the hub including their extensive cold storage capacities and got to see a large delivery of food!

Thank you to the service hub coordinators for welcoming us and allowing us to take a tour of their spaces! Our visits to the remaining three service hubs are scheduled for the beginning of February and we can’t wait to visit and hear more about their programs! You can find more information about the service hubs on the Montgomery County Food Resources webpage.