Atlanta Hawks and volunteers pack more than a million meals for hungry Georgia families

The Atlanta Hawks teamed up with thousands of volunteers over the weekend to pack more than a million meals at State Farm Arena.

Those meals are now headed to food banks and community partners across metro Atlanta.

The focus now is getting all of that food out of boxes and into the communities that need it most.

The Atlanta Community Food Bank received about a third of the meals packed. CBS News Atlanta visited the food bank to find out the next steps.

"We've received over 38,000 pounds of the food that were packaged. That's about 300,000 of the meals, I believe," said Jon West, vice president of partner relations at the food bank.

The organization works with community partners who order what they need and then distribute it directly to neighbors.

The meals packed with jambalaya on Saturday will go as far as Floyd, Heard, and Union counties.

West said they can last families about a week.

"I can tell you that food came into our warehouse yesterday, and within three hours, every bit of that food has been ordered by our partners who are really excited, and there's a lot of need in our community right now to get this food out," said West. "We work as quickly as we can to get that right back out into the community, into the hands of our partners who are going to be distributing that directly to neighbors over the coming weeks."

West said families will begin receiving the meals within a week.