And it intends to do it in just three hours.
So massive is the effort, Feed the Children has asked for help from the Salvation Army of Greater Charlotte and from The Park Ministries, which owns the center formerly known as the Merchandise Mart. Their jobs: Find 3,200 families to receive the food and another 200 volunteers to give it out.
Registration for families runs Tuesday through Thursday, and organizers say their goal is to reach out to people who are new to poverty.
"We're trying to find that demographic of people that might not think they'd normally qualify to receive food," said Salvation Army spokesman Jim Price.
"These could be people who just recently lost jobs, or they still have jobs, but they're struggling month-to-month to meet their obligations," Price said.
The effort is called the Americans Feeding Americans Emergency Caravan, and it will bring eight tractor-trailer loads of food and health products.
Charlotte was chosen because of the impact the recession had on the city's banking industry, said Feed the Children spokesman Tony Sellars. The community's unemployment rate is about 2 percent higher than the national average, and Feed the Children estimates 70,000 people here live in poverty, 16 percent of them children.
Source: Mark Price, The Charlotte Observer
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