Anne Voyles, an 80-year-old lifelong Gainesville resident, doesn't hear a lot of good news about money in her line of work - feeding the hungry.
So when the full-time volunteer at Bread of the Mighty Food Bank, a warehouse that stores food for agencies to distribute in five surrounding counties, opened up an innocent-looking letter from Nationwide Foundation to find a $10,000 grant, she said she couldn't help squealing, then screaming, then crying.
"I was doing payroll when I got the letter," Voyles said. "I had just been thinking about how concerned I was we weren't gonna make it."
Voyles said that with the state of the economy, donations to the nonprofit organization have been incredibly low. The money from Nationwide basically doubled the charity's budget, she said.
Voyles, who has been the director of Bread of the Mighty Food Bank since 2000, said she and the other volunteers decided the money should go to installing a refrigerator in the semi-truck they use to transport food from Miami.
Every month, Voyles sends a trucking company south to a reclaim center, where food is bought at a few cents per pound from various grocery stores. The stores send food to the center if it is near the expiration date or if the packaging is damaged.
With a refrigerator in the truck, Voyles said they will be able to buy meats, cheese, greens and dairy products the organization normally has to get from Gainesville supermarkets.
Last year, Bread of the Mighty distributed about 1.65 million pounds of food and necessities to about 55,170 people, Voyles said.
