By: Dove
—
Carl Mitchell, better known to the entertainment world as the record-setting, chart-topping rapper Twista, pitched in recently with the Chicago Food Bank Producemobile program to serve fresh fruits and vegetables hundreds of people in his Illinois community.
The 38-year-old Chicago native volunteers with the Greater Chicago Food Depository mobile unit to help those in need in his old neighborhood, and continues to help fund their cause. Over 100,000 families rely on the Food Depository each week in the Chicago area alone, and Twista is doing his part to help out his community in every way he can.
As featured in the video below, Twista‘s entire GMG team rolled up their sleeves to work, doing whatever was necessary to assist the food bank staff. They also talked to the people about the very serious hunger problems in their community.
According to the Chicago Food Bank website, poverty in the area has been on the rise, with a staggering 21.6% of the inner-city Cook County residents living in poverty as of 2009. Here is more information from their site:
The need in our community was underscored by data from the 2009 U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey released on Sept. 28, which revealed that 15.9 percent of Cook County residents lived in poverty in 2009, up from 14.8 percent in 2008, and surpassing the national poverty rate of 14.3 percent.
Within city-limits poverty rates were even worse at 21.6 percent in 2009 or 603,218 people, compared to 20.6 percent in 2008. Children were particularly hard hit. In Cook County, 22.6 percent—or 286,310 children—lived in poverty in last year. In Chicago nearly one in three children lived in poverty in 2009, totaling 207,013 children. For additional reports and fact sheets, please visit Heartland Alliance.
Twista recently released his eighth studio album The Perfect Storm. Over the course of two decades, Twista’s contributions to music have included multiple hit songs and even a place in the Guinness Book of World Records in 1992 for being the fastest rapper ever.
Follow Twista on Twitter @TwistaGMG
For more information on Chicago’s Producemobile program and other initiatives, go to ChicagosFoodBank.org
