Graduate Student and Edmonds Food Bank Executive Director Named Citizen of the Year

Casey Davis, ’22, a student in Seattle U's Master of Nonprofit Leadership program and executive director of the Edmonds Food Bank, received the 2020 Edmonds Citizen of the Year award, along with the volunteers who staff it.

As reported by MyEdmondsNews.com, “It was another tough decision,” said Edmonds Kiwanis Club’s Frannie Cohen about the 2020 Citizen of the Year award. “We had more than 15 nominations. But as we sorted through them and discussed, the Edmonds Food Bank and Casey Davis’s name kept rising to the top.”

Following are excerpts from the story:

“‘I was so excited,’ Davis said, adding that this year has been particularly daunting as she and the volunteers scrambled to keep providing food to their customers despite the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic.

“In addition to instituting an online ordering and curbside pickup system to keep person-to-person contact to a minimum, the sheer volume of families and customers needing help has mushroomed with the pandemic.

“’Since the COVID crisis began, we’ve added more than 700 new customers,’ Davis said. ‘Last month alone we served more than 1,630 households, comprising just shy of 5,500 individuals, and more than 1,000 of these have some sort of special circumstances—no permanent home, diabetes, need for baby food, gluten intolerance, etc.—that we help provide for.’

“Davis reported that in September alone, 157 volunteers put in a combined total of more than 2,500 hours and provided more than 175,000 pounds of food,” with the food bank opened seven days a week.