By Marcy Axness, Patric Hedlund, TME and Shari Rightmer, Shar-On

The coronavirus pandemic is surging worse than ever this week. One of its most widespread impacts is also surging: food insecurity.

Research from the Feeding America network (of 2,000 food banks nationwide) shows that over 50,000,000 Americans—one in six of us, including one in four children—are suffering from food insecurity.

Within Kern County, Feeding America’s study calculates that food insecurity for children has gone up by 50% between 2018 and 2020, due to the pandemic.

Homeless Heroes

Homeless activist Shari Rightmer runs two nonprofit charitable groups that are based in Taft. They operate on a shoestring budget, but are turbocharged with…(please see below to view full stories and photographs)

Photo captions:

Above: A hands-on Shari Rightmer delivered food to the Mountain Communities Family Resource Center this spring, and many times since.

Laborers of the Harvest volunteers distribute free food in Taft and the Frazier Mountain Communities.

Above: Besides helping supply the Mountain Communities FRC food bank and making distributions in Pine Mountain Club, Shari Rightmer’s team for Laborers of the Harvest staff the line in Taft to provide daily food to those in need. Many of the team members are homeless.

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This is part of the December 4, 2020 online edition of The Mountain Enterprise.

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