Columbus, OH,
16
September
2016
|
15:33 PM
Europe/Amsterdam

Mid-Ohio Foodbank Steps in to Assist OhioHealth Mothers' Milk Bank

Recently, the team at the OhioHealth Mothers’ Milk Bank noticed something wasn’t quite right.

“One of our freezers, which was storing unpasteurized milk kept setting off the circuit breaker and needed to go down for repair,” said Chris Smith, outreach coordinator and lactation consultant with the Milk Bank.

With that freezer being full of milk, and the other freezers full, the team needed to act fast and find a place to store the milk. Otherwise, the donated milk would go bad and would need to be thrown away.

So Chris called the Mid-Ohio Foodbank to see if they had any ideas of places she could pay to rent freezer space. That’s when the Foodbank jumped in and said there was no need to pay to rent space somewhere else – they had room available and would store the breast milk for the Milk Bank until the freezer was fixed.

“We were just speechless,” said Chris. “It was a blessing for them to be able to do that for us.”

The Foodbank said they were happy to offer up the space.

“OhioHealth is such an amazing partner with the Food Bank,” said Marilyn Tomasi, vice president of marketing and communications/public affairs for the Mid-Ohio Foodbank. “They participate in our ‘Operation Feed’ program and our ‘Get Fresh’ program, so when the call came from OhioHealth that (they) needed help in storing milk, we wanted to be there for (them) like OhioHealth has been there for us.”

The team at the Milk Bank knew the milk would be well taken care of at the Foodbank.

“We know the Mid-Ohio Foodbank was a safe place,” said Chris. “They store food and we knew it was in good hands with them. It was a generous donation on their part to store the milk for us.”