TAMPA, Fla. — As more Americans face food insecurity, a Tampa-based organization continues feeding the hungry.

Just as it has been doing for millions for many decades.

On a typically busy day at Feeding Tampa Bay, President and CEO Thomas Mantz, as well as staff and thousands of volunteers are busy doing the work that helps provide meals for some one million people annually across a 10-county area.

Mantz said the mission remains “to make sure that folks that don’t have the same resources that the rest of us do can put food on their table or have access to training partnerships and other service opportunities that create better personal and household capabilities.”

In addition to providing meals, the organization stocks a Publix community market, a free grocery store where shoppers come by appointment.

Remarkably, it is just one of more than 400 ways people can get food through Feeding Tampa Bay.

“We have two outcomes that we want,” Mantz said. “The first is healthiness, which comes from good nutritional food. The second is capability that comes from access to resources.”

A nonprofit organization, about 98 percent of what Feeding Tampa Bay takes in goes right back out to those in need.

Since it began 42 years ago, more than 750 million meals have been provided.

And Mantz said the attitude of the mission is 51 percent about dignity and 49 percent about food.

And he adds the people who are served here include many you probably know.

Grandparents on a fixed income dealing with runaway food costs, people who cut your hair or people who fix your car.

“I would remind everybody that were not serving anybody that’s a ‘them’,’’ Mantz said. “We’re serving us. our friends, our neighbors, our coworkers. People we know and care about.”