Hunters for the Hungry Board Chair Bob Williams serving lunch at a local nonprofit partner. Photo courtesy of Hunters for the Hungry.
For over 20 years, Hunters for the Hungry has been working to fight food insecurity in South Carolina.
South Carolina ranks seventh in the nation in food insecurity, and is one of the most devastating challenges facing communities. Hunters for the Hungry has seen how hunger distills hope, affects children’s abilities to learn, weakens families, and forces parents to make impossible choices — and for the past two decades, they’ve been fighting back.
Hunters for the Hungry has two operations. Their first statewide program encourages hunters to donate legally-harvested deer to processors, who give the meat to food banks, soup kitchens, and feeding institutions. Their second program delivers venison meat sticks to backpack programs across the state in order to give children facing food insecurity something to eat over the weekend.
Since 2004, the organization has donated over 1,800,000 pounds of meat — enough protein for over four and a half million meals. They have also donated over 150,000 venison meat sticks to feed their neighbors.
“We were started by a bunch of hunters who felt blessed by God, because every year, they would harvest more deer than they needed. They started giving it out to churches and families in the area that needed it, and it just grew and grew and grew,” says Bob Williams, the organization’s president.
“I was raised by a single mom, and one of the things that always made me feel secure was I never had to worry about a meal,” he says. “I don’t know how she did it, but I never had to worry what to eat. I could concentrate on getting an education and living my life, and that’s one of the things that really inspired me to try to help feed people.”
Last year, the state legislature made the decision to cut nonprofit funding, greatly increasing the pressure on the Hunters for the Hungry volunteers to raise enough money to keep their operations running: to pay the processors, and maintain daily operations like refrigerated trucks that fuel the organization’s ability to partner with local food banks. At the same time, the federal government cut TEFAP and SNAP programs, increasing community need all the more.
Later this week, on August 8th, the organization will be hosting one of their largest fundraisers of the year, the South Carolina Hunters for the Hungry Annual Benefit Dinner. Volunteers will be cooking phenomenal barbecue all night long, and Sheriff Bill Rhyne will be the keynote speaker. The event will feature a live auction, as well as an eight-gun giveaway, with all proceeds supporting the organization’s mission.
The event will be held from 5:00 – 8:30 p.m. at Philadelphia Baptist Church in Pauline, SC.
If you’re interested in attending the event and supporting the fight against food insecurity in South Carolina, you can purchase tickets online at schuntersforthehungry.com or by calling 1-484-542-9158.
