No, CORA isn’t our newest staff member (although we are looking for another team member; read all about it here!). CORA is a food pantry…and our newest Community Book Bank partner!
CORA Food Pantry was founded in 1989 as the Chatham OutReach Alliance, Inc. (CORA) with the sole mission of providing emergency food to those in need throughout Chatham County. Their long-standing approach is to provide emergency food to individuals and families who are thrust into a crisis because of job loss, illness, loss of domicile, loss of breadwinner, or other hardship.
CORA now serves an average of 500 families per month and expects to provide over 500,000 meals this year. Among the many things that make CORA a unique organization are its programs for children: SNACK! (Summer Nutritional Assistance for Chatham Kids), which provides meals and snacks for children from food-insecure families during the summer; the Backpack Support Program, which provides financial and technical support for eleven backpack programs in the county, ensuring children have meals over the weekends and school breaks; and the Birthday Closet, which ensures that families have food and supplies to celebrate their children’s birthdays.
This focus on children and the large number of families CORA serves is what inspired volunteer David Goshaw to take on the responsibility for sprucing up the children’s area of CORA’s waiting room. Once he had done that, he realized what was missing: books! Rebecca Hankins, CORA’s Development Director, knew about Book Harvest and suggested that Goshaw apply to partner with us to stock their new bookshelf. Just last week, we kicked off our partnership!
“CORA is so appreciative of this new partnership with Book Harvest providing books to children who visit the pantry,” shared Hankins. “We strive to provide our clients an atmosphere of empathy, support, and community and the children’s area is critical to achieving this by giving our youngest visitors a place to access books that they might not have otherwise.”
We are so grateful to partner with CORA in this small way, supporting the important work they are doing in Chatham County! Welcome to Community Book Bank, CORA!