East Texas Food Bank Case Study

On Tuesday evening, over fifty of our leaders from Auto, Innovation, and Recovery came to fight hunger and feed hope at the San Antonio Food Bank. Collectively they sorted through 20,330 pounds of food which resulted in 16,264 meals for the city of San Antonio and it's surrounding counties. It was an evening of camaraderie and fun that will never be forgotten.

I met with Maria Thompson and Mark Paxton from the Community Food Bank in regard to their site improvements. The Food Bank is requesting CSDC administer a contract with Avila Construction for their site improvements to San Felipe Rd frontage and parking lot improvement that access their building. The contract amount is $57,461.The Food Bank Board has approved the expense and repayment in full to CSDC if we choose to administer the contract. A repayment agreement between the Food Bank and CSDC would need to be drafted prior to approving any contract.

Previous funds were used to pay the pantry’s one employee, Program Director Stephani Nichols. Her resume is attached. She has brought great value to Project 66 Food Pantry and has provided assistance well beyond her wages. Stephani has enabled the pantry to meet their previous goals (find and purchase a building, buy, and implement computers) and has created new goals that meet the needs of the Edmond community.

During the time I spent volunteering at John C. Lincoln’s Food Bank, I was able to provide food, individual hygiene items, and infant supplies to families struggling to obtain these critical items for their families. When I first arrived at the food bank, I spent time constructing care packages with soap, toothbrushes, personal wipes, and other essential items for health care. Later in the day, I had the unique opportunity to assist with the simulated grocery store within the food bank. The structure of the store allowed individuals receiving food to feel as though they were actively participating instead of passively accepting food and feeling helpless. Overall, I was able to instill a sense of self-efficiency in individuals who were struggling to provide for their families while personally interacting and sharing my time in a meaningful way.

The way River City Food Bank works is that they open to the public from 11:30 am to 3:00 pm. They provide many services for single and multiple families. Anyone who lives in Sacramento and reports that they or their dependents are living at or below the federal poverty line are eligible to receive these benefits. This site relies on the help of volunteers from around the Sacramento area. The day I went to River City Food Bank, there were twenty volunteers on this site ready to help and assist. My role was

Thesis Statement: The Houston Food Bank uses the efforts of volunteers as well as donations to support the reduction of hunger in the community.

This semester the agency that I chose to work closely with is the Hays County Food Bank. This is a private nonprofit agency that distributes food to the people who are truly struggling to make ends meet. There is currently no longer a social worker at the food bank, but I did interview my two supervisors. I worked closely with my two supervisors, Jason and Chadwic, while both work for this nonprofit agency and both have a bachelor’s degree, they have very different backgrounds and experiences. The Volunteer Services Coordinator, Jason Kamimoto, achieved his bachelors at a school located in Hawaii. Jason makes sure there is enough volunteers present each day to make every distribution successful. Although this is Jason’s first nonprofit

There are so many people in this world today, that are not aware of the huge storage in our local food bank community. Per the Houston food bank the goal of the Feeding America program is to make food accessible to feed hungry people in their greatest times of need. Therefore, our team is gear up to break the food shortage in defining the problem, analyze the cause, identify criteria, potential solutions and selecting the best solution.

During my summer breaks I volunteer at the Second Harvest Food Bank. I do specific shifts such as labeling meat products and packaging them or storing food boxes with non perishables (food cans, cereal boxes) and boxing them for one family. I am a current member of Key Club, it also partnered with Second Harvest. Every Thursdays, I help out in Key Club by cleaning the campus and recycling to make the school more environmentally friendly. Outside of school, I attend Aktion Club and monthly car washes to help fundraise for DCON and grow relationships with people in our community that are disabled. There were occurrences where I had to take a role in setting up events like in the Diabetes and Breast Cancer Walk, I was responsible making every

Considering the following statistics, it is clear why Hunger Free Colorado’s work is so important: Nearly 1 in 7 Coloradans struggled with hunger in 2013, facing times when there was not enough money to buy food for their families or themselves (Colman-Jenson, Gregory, & Singh, 2013). More than 1 in 5 Colorado households with children (22%) reported food hardship, facing financial challenges to put food on the table (Food Research and Action Center, 2013). More than 1 in 8 Coloradans lived in poverty, including 1 in 6 kids, during 2013 (Bishaw & Fontenot, 2014).

This particular article is written by Patricia A. Duffy who states that low income families use the food pantry for emergence assistance for food, aside from the traditional government programs; this article suggests that food pantries are heavily used for emergency food (Duffy). The article focuses more on lower income families instead of the homeless. It compares food stamp programs along with the food pantry to understand how they both tie in to one another. There are various statistics and interviews of those who participate in such programs across the nation.

The current research findings within Texas gives rise to the situation in Nacogdoches County. Although no two counties are alike, research on rural Texas counties reveal common barriers. Many of the same issues are expressed throughout the region. Joliffe (2004) showed that over 40 percent of the U.S. nonmetro population had the greatest prevalence of both poverty and persistent poverty. This is the equivalent to one in six persons in the region living in poverty, and more than one in four living in persistent poverty counties (Joliffe, 2004). This gives impoverished rural families very little income for adequate

In Texas 1 in 4 children which equals 1.8 million, are hungry or at risk of hunger. Texas is the 2nd highest state with food not guaranteed to children among all 50 of the states.Texas also ranks as the third highest state in household food uncertainty. Community gardens help reduce the food shortage, also it helps build the community, and improve health by increasing the vegetable

On August 4, 2015, Vivian Cu and I chose to volunteer at the Second Harvest Food Bank located on 700 Edwards Ave. in New Orleans. Our Tuesday morning of service started at 9AM and ended around 11:30AM. In preparation for my first time at Second Harvest, I wore comfortable clothes that were easy to move around in and that were possible to get dirty in. The man in charge of all volunteer services, Vince, quickly gave me my duty for the day. There is a huge case of canned goods and my job was to put as many canned goods as possible on a conveyor belt. The conveyor belt would carry these cans to many aisles where other volunteers would put them into smaller boxes that had to weigh from fifteen to thirty pounds. After packaging these boxes, Second

Food insecurity is an issue faced by millions of Americans every day, and the biggest group affected by this are working families with children. Food insecurity is so big that the United States government have now recognized it and provided a definition for it. The United States government has defined food insecurity as a household level economic and social condition of limited or uncertain access to adequate food (USDA.gov). Food banks and anti-hunger advocates agree that some of the causes of food insecurity are stagnant wages, increase in housing costs, unemployment, and inflation of the cost of food. These factors and unemployment have cause food banks to see a change in the groups of people needing assistance. Doug O’Brien,