Story & Photos
By Michael Kinney
Kenrich Williams knows how tough it can be. Even though he is living his dreams, the Oklahoma City Thunder forward has seen hard times in his life.
So, when the entire Thunder organization took a shift at the Regional Food Bank of Oklahoma During its annual Thunder Cares service project, Williams knew just how important that work is to the community.
“Being a father, I’m blessed enough to be able to have money to buy food,” Williams said. “But I was once in the position when I was young to be of need. It’s good to give back like this. Especially for the fathers, single mothers and guardians as well just to be able to have some support coming in. It’s a really good feeling.”
From MVP candidate Shai Gilgeous-Alexander to first-year rookie, the rosters of the Oklahoma City Thunder, coaches, operations and business office staff came together to volunteer at the food bank on March 20. They helped to sort, pack, and prepare food packages for clients of the nonprofit’s various programs.
In total, the group completed packing more than 32,000 pounds of food for a total of 27,000 meals.
“We were trying to figure out how many pallets to tell them to do, and they were already past what we were going to tell them to do,” said Regional Food Bank of Oklahoma CEO Stacy Dykstra. “We’ve got a very hardworking group here today. It would be thousands, thousands of meals that they provided. This is also with the Backpack for Kids program. There’s some pre-work that’s done with those backpacks to make it very accessible for our children, and they’ve been really helping us get ahead of the game today, which is wonderful.”
But well after the Thunder had left the building, the Regional Food Bank of Oklahoma staff were still hard at work cleaning up the shop and preparing for the next shift to arrive.
With more than 15 percent of households in Oklahoma considered food insecure, the work never stops.
With more than 120 workers and volunteers, the Regional Food Bank of Oklahoma, which was founded in 1980, does yeoman work to feed the hungry in the state. More than a million pounds of food come through the Regional Food Bank each week. That supplies more than 900,000 meals for Oklahomans in the 53 countries that they serve.
“So we capture food, food that’s donated. We purchase food and we get food through the federal government, and then we put it together in ways and push it back out through our network of partners who then feed our neighbors that are facing hunger,” said Dykstra. “We feed are hardworking families trying to make ends meet, which often means they’re working more than one job, sometimes without benefits. Or maybe it’s not full-time. So they’re working seniors on very fixed incomes and then of course children who can’t work. But it is a big problem because we have a lot of people who are working either low-paying jobs or part-time jobs, and it just makes you have very little margin. So if one thing goes wrong in your life, you end up not being able to put food on the table for a couple of months.”
While the food bank has done a good job of making sure those in need do not go hungry, Dykstra knows even tougher times may be on the horizon.
“What I would tell you is we are serving more people now than we were during Covid,” said Dykstra. “ We’ve seen it grow the last two years especially. And it’s inflation. It’s not that people aren’t working, it’s that inflation just costs more. Everything costs more.”
But what has Dykstra worried even more than inflation, are the recent federal budget cuts that have been initiated under executive order by President Donald Trump.
The day after the Thunder visit, it was announced the U.S. Department of Agriculture had canceled $500 million in expected food deliveries nationwide.
Earlier this month the Trump administration also announced it had cut two programs that gave schools and food banks money to buy food from local farms and ranchers, halting more than $1 billion in federal spending. Officials labeled them as “covid era” assistance that was no longer necessary.
Because of these cuts, sources the food bank has counted on in the past will no longer be available to them. According to a 2023 study, One out of every six Americans sought food from food banks.
“In the last week or so, we’ve found out that a couple of things have been cut, which is we’re going to have to make adjustments to figure that out,” Dykstra said. “And then what we do is we try to make up the difference with purchase product.”
The USDA has ended the Local Food for Schools Cooperative Agreement Program (LFS) and the Local Food Purchase Assistance Cooperative Agreement Program (LFPA).
“These programs, created under the former Administration via Executive authority, no longer effectuate the goals of the agency,” stated a USDA spokesperson. “LFPA and LFPA Plus agreements that were in place prior to LFPA 25, which still have substantial financial resources remaining, will continue to be in effect for the remainder of the period of performance.”
The LFPA is a program that the food bank had come to rely on. It is authorized by the American Rescue Plan to maintain and improve food and agricultural supply chain resiliency.
According to the state of Oklahoma, the Oklahoma Local Farmers Program for Underserved Populations identified and reached out to underserved farmers and producers to provide them an opportunity to distribute food products to local underserved communities, helping to expand economic development for both the producers and the communities they serve.
“It was a really neat program where we worked with local farmers and purchased from them,” said Dykstra. “So all of those local farmers, instead of having to go to us and try to sell, this food hub, organized all of that so we would know what’s available and then we could buy what we needed. It was this beautiful win-win because we’re supporting the local economy, our local farmers, our local producers and ranchers, and getting that food in the door and then getting it back out.”
The LFPA is funded through June 30. Dykstra had held out hope that maybe the officials would change their mind or realize just how important the funds are for people in need. She no longer sees that as a possibility.
“We’re doing the numbers right now to figure out what that looks like. We just found out for sure it’s cut,” Dykstra said. “It’s just like all at the Oklahoma City Thunder. You invest in people. You understand that investing in people is the best investment you can make and it makes us all better. And we believe that same thing. And investing in people starts with nourishing their bodies.”
Despite the cuts, Dykstra said the regional food bank will continue to supply food to the 267 pantries throughout 53 counties. But she is under no illusion that at some point an impact will be felt.
Dykstra wishes that the officials who made the decision to cut the programs or stepped aside and allowed it to happen could do like the Oklahoma City Thunder and see up close exactly what food banks do and who they help.
“I kind of think you don’t know what you don’t know,” Dykstra said. “And I feel like if you haven’t ever been touched by something or experienced it or had a loved one that experienced it, you wouldn’t really know necessarily. And it’s why our voices have to be strong and loud to say ‘This is real-life stuff.’”
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