The AES Foundation is sponsoring a new van for The Foodbank Inc., to serve the Dayton region.
"They've been in partnership with us for so long, it predates my time at the Foodbank and then some," said Amber Wright, marketing lead at the Foodbank Inc.
According to Wright, this is the second van that the AES Foundation has been able to provide for The Foodbank.
"It's already being put to use. We've already had one of our community health workers meet somebody with the van, and we've also transported our staff to a few different places," she said.
The 2024 Ford Transit seats up to 15 passengers and will help the Foodbank meet the growing need for food assistance across Montgomery, Greene and Preble counties.
"It'll be used to pick up and drop off our food drive collection barrels for any of the people or organizations that hold a food drive on our behalf," Wright said. "And it's also going to help support the work of our community health workers who meet with clients in different parts of the community every single day."
Wright said adding the van to the nonprofit’s fleet will allow them to better serve those hard to reach communities.
“It's better equipped to navigate those tight neighborhood roads and even tight parking," she said. "A lot better than one of our box trucks, which is often a challenge to fit in those spaces.”
Wright said the foundation gave $55,000 in support of the new van. The total cost was just under $70,000 and was fully covered through a separate, private donation.
"When businesses in our area really want to do community outreach and help the community, it doesn't make sense to reinvent the wheel and establish their own infrastructure and establish their own staff instead," she said. "They can just make a donation to organizations like ours and use our existing infrastructure, our existing staff and have it compounded by the dollars that we're bringing in through fundraising on our own."
