- South Street's Care Home gives out 800-1,000 boxes of food to neighbors every Tuesday and Thursday.
- VocalFlo will be using proceeds from the South Georgia Gospel Festival to help out the home.
- Watch the video to hear from neighbors about the impact of the South Street Care Home.
BROADCAST TRANSCRIPT
"People can come by anytime they want and get their blood pressure and blood sugar checked. "
I'm Malia Thomas, your neighborhood reporter in Valdosta. I'm adding up a growing need for those services and how you can help.
Kimberly Grisson-Dixon and her husband Adrien, created VocalFlo, a platform that gives musicians opportunities to perform.
They started the South Georgia Gospel Music Festival last year in Valdosta when they saw an opportunity. "We didn't want just the platform or the gospel festival just to be about us. We want it to be again about the community."
This year, they'll be donating the proceeds from the festival to South Street Community Care Home, a nonprofit dedicated to feeding neighbors.
Food insecurity is an issue Kimberly is passionate about as she grew up, "in a food desert. I grew up in a place where we didn't always have access to meals, a hot meal every day. There were times when our only meal growing up as a child came from school."
South Street's Care Home works to help a fraction of the 20,000 living in Lowndes County who don't know where their next meal is coming from.
On top of food, "we have information providing where resources where they can go to get help with rental assistance, where they could also get help for repairing utilities and everything like that."
Sandra Tooley has lived in Valdosta her whole life and seen firsthand the needs of the community.
She tells me it's why the Care Home needs funds to expand their food storage and services.
"We're trying to expand to get better equipment that can help us move faster, and maybe we can get volunteers who can stay more because this is hard work."
Which VocalFlo is happy to help with, because, "I understand the need for this place because I wish I had a community care house in my neighborhood growing up."
The South Georgia Gospel Festival will be taking place here at Unity Park downtown on June 8.
