The Dream Center Golden Triangle is starting a new program, DC Feeds, in 2024 to distribute goods to area food pantries and churches.
Dream Center Director John Almond told Columbus Exchange Club on Thursday that after two years of working on the idea, Jackson-based Mississippi Food Network approved the center to receive grocery items and then distribute them locally.
“We were literally approved this past Friday,” Almond said. “This is our initiative to take food distribution to the hungry and poor throughout our Golden Triangle region. … We’re going to take food distribution to a level never imagined in this area.”
To do this, Almond said the organization has partnered with several churches, such as First Baptist Church Steens and the First Methodist Church of West Point, to help distribute goods to food pantries and to people in need.
The food will be delivered regularly and stored at the center’s West Point headquarters in the old Bryan Foods building at 2494 East Church Hill Road. Those interested in becoming a distributor for food items can reach out to the Dream Center.
“The warehouse is the (center) of the wheel, and the spokes are the churches and community members who are points of distribution,” Almond said. “We have churches and community members … just waiting for the food to start next year.”
Almond told The Dispatch he is also looking to form agreements with community-based organizations to receive food from the warehouse, but he declined to disclose who they were until those deals are set in place.
Bedz 4 Kidz
The center was founded in 2019 to support assistance efforts for people in need. That same year, Almond and his partners also founded Bedz 4 Kidz, a program to build and supply beds to children aged 3 to 17 who don’t have one.
“We discovered a need years ago to serve children in the communities that don’t have beds,” Almond said. “Here’s the truth. I’m in these homes almost every week, and there is poverty here that is beyond your wildest imagination. So, we want to get them off the floor and help give them an opportunity and a good education and a good life and give them hope wherever they are.”
Almond estimates there are between 6,000 and 7,000 children without beds in the three-county region, and he and his team have delivered more than 1,200 beds to meet that need so far.
Generally, two-thirds of the beds will go to Lowndes County residents, while the other third are divided between Oktibbeha and Clay counties.
Those looking to support the center can do so by visiting the website to either donate money or sponsor a bed build, where a company or organization pays $5,000 for new materials to be delivered for Almond and his team to build the beds.
“We are building beds wherever we can gain sponsorship for a bed build,” Almond said. “We will go anywhere in the Golden Triangle and conduct a build at a sponsor’s location, or we’ll build right at the Dream Center because we need to meet this need.”
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