Food drive collects culturally conscious food donations for refugee families

Bins on top of the Wallace parking deck on East Rosemary Street were full of pita, rice, dried chickpeas and other foods on Sunday.

The Food Drive for Refugee Community Partnership collected food at the Food Truck Rodeo on Rosemary Street to benefit refugee families.

“There’s a big issue with other organizations that collect food in food drives, but they are not targeted to the types of foods that are culturally appropriate,” said Moriah Swick, a volunteer with the Food Drive.

Swick said the main event for the food drive was on March 25 at the Chapel Hill Community Center.

She said the drive raised 463.8 pounds of food, $610 through GoFundMe and extra cash donations at the main event.

“The GoFundMe and cash donations will go towards buying gift cards to go to the Burmese market and they can buy fresh local vegetables, fruits and meat,” Swick said.

Swick said there are around 30 Burmese families and six Syrian families in the Chapel Hill and Carrboro area who will benefit from the donations. She said she has been wanting to serve refugees in the community.

“My March mission was to help refugees, and a friend of mine helped me contact the Refugee Community Partnership,” Swick said.

She said social media helped the event become a success.

“I’m a member of a thing called SoDu Parents Posse, or Southern Durham Parents Posse, and I did a post saying that I wanted to become involved with volunteering with my toddler son so that he will become accustomed to helping others,” Swick said. “There was such a strong response that I created a thing called the Lil Volunteer Posse and we have over 250 members that do monthly volunteering events.”

Therese Garrett said she heard about the event through the Lil Volunteer Posse Facebook group and wanted to donate food to help the refugees.

Jenna Kanoy Darby, a volunteer with the Food Drive, helped coordinate the event.

“A couple of months ago I contacted the Refugee Community Partnership because I’m at home with my kid all day, and I have so much flexibility,” Darby said. “I wanted to know what I could do and the needs of the area. We brainstormed a lot of ideas and the food drive seemed to be a good place to start.”

Darby said she helped to advertise for the event by handing out flyers.

“Staples donated 150 flyers, and I plastered those all over the area. Some people said they saw flyers at Med Deli and other places around town,” Swick said.

Swick said there are plans to help the refugee families through food drives in the future.

“We would ideally like to continue this on a regular basis, maybe quarterly. We want to look into possibly collecting other items that these families need, such as clothing or furniture,” Swick said.

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