Thousands of people across Central Alabama are challenged when it comes to accessing nutritious food. They range from families desperately stretching grocery budgets to children who rely primarily on school meals to homebound seniors with limited access to groceries.
Approximately 187,640 people face food insecurity, i.e., they’re hungry, across United Way of Central Alabama’s (UWCA) six-county service area. In 2025 alone, UWCA-supported programs helped provide more than 15.7 million meals to area residents.
But fighting hunger goes beyond providing a meal. It takes a network of people and organizations working together to connect neighbors with resources where and when they need them.
Delivering Meals and Social Connection to Older Adults
For homebound seniors, accessing nutritious food can be difficult due to age, disability, limited transportation or lack of ongoing assistance from family or friends.
Meals on Wheels helps meet that need in Jefferson County by delivering nutritious meals directly to seniors’ homes.
Those visits by volunteers also provide vital human contact and an opportunity to check on clients’ safety and well-being.
In 2025 alone, Meals on Wheels delivered 249,961 meals to 1,368 seniors, supported by 687 volunteers who contributed 19,792 hours of service.
Today, the program prepares and delivers more than 5,000 meals each week. People interested in learning whether they or someone they know may qualify for senior services can call 1-800-AGE-LINE.
Bringing Food Resources Closer to Families
Sometimes the challenge is not whether resources exist, but whether families can easily reach them.
Through our inCommunity program, UWCA works with schools, municipalities and various partners to centralize many of the most-needed community services at neighborhood schools — making them easily accessible to families where they live, work and learn.
In Fairfield schools, for example, that support includes food pantries, resource closets for clothing, toiletries and school supplies and services such as mentoring, academic support and workforce development.
This approach recognizes that hunger rarely exists in isolation. Housing costs, employment, transportation and other household expenses can make it harder for families to afford food.
United Way and its partners are also bringing food directly into communities through efforts such as the Jasper Family Market, a partnership among UWCA, Jasper City Schools and the Community Food Bank of Central Alabama. Held monthly at Jasper’s First Baptist Church, the market gives families another way to access food close to home.
Working Together to Address Childhood Hunger
For children who rely on school meals, afternoons, weekends and summer breaks can create gaps in consistent access to nutritious food.
UWCA’s Bold Goals Coalition brings together more than 200 organizations across six counties to collaboratively address complex community challenges, including improving access to nutritious food for children and families.
By connecting schools, nonprofits, businesses, government agencies and other community partners, the coalition helps identify gaps, coordinate resources and work toward solutions that provide children the food they need to grow and thrive.
Creating Multiple Points of Support
United Way’s work to address hunger also extends through its network of partner agencies.
Organizations throughout Central Alabama provide groceries, meals and emergency assistance to people experiencing food insecurity. UWCA partners such as Shelby Emergency Assistance, Christian Love Pantry, The Salvation Army, YMCA of Greater Birmingham and YMCA of Chilton County are among the organizations fighting hunger in a variety of ways.
Together, UWCA programs, partner agencies and community collaborations create multiple points of access to food assistance across the region, helping people connect with support closer to wherever they live.
Learn more about how United Way of Central Alabama and its partners are working to fight hunger across Central Alabama; and find ways that you can get involved by clicking here.
This blog, which has been edited for detail and clarification, originally appeared in Bham Now‘s “Fighting hunger in Central Alabama: 5 local resources + how to help”