In North Carolina, the working poor make up one-third of the workforce, half of residents can’t afford their rent, and wages are lower today than before the recession. Hannah Randall, Chief Executive Officer of MANNA Food Bank in Asheville, NC, suspects the situation is worse than the data suggests in…
Food Bank News
The Atlanta Community Food Bank is unleashing a monster that’s infiltrating billboards, TVs and radios. The shape-shifting monster can’t be seen, but is “quiet and sneaky and ugly and mean.” Its first name is Hun, its last name is Grr. Yes, the Hunger Monster is invading Atlanta, via a multi-media…
When Houston Food Bank set out to address root causes of hunger, ranging from poor health to unemployment, it knew it needed to partner with hospitals, schools and clinics. It didn’t realize that getting these community organizations on board would require it to develop a nutrition policy. Now two years…
Taking cues from both Trader Joe’s and the food justice movement, Northwest Harvest of Seattle is opening a new food distribution center on June 24 that aims to offer a respectful, welcoming and even fun grocery shopping experience. The name of the outlet — SODO Community Market (standing for Seattle’s…
Early in Jaynee Day’s career as President and CEO of Second Harvest Food Bank of Middle Tennessee, a local grocer moved away, wiping out millions of pounds of donated food, plus a tidy income the food bank had generated by handling the grocer’s reclamation needs. Day wound up turning the…
With WIC participation declining at an alarming rate, some food banks and hunger-relief agencies are taking steps to shore up their local programs. Participation in the federal benefit for women and their children has dropped 23% from 2010 through 2018, said Food Research & Action Center in a report released…
Challenged by local funders to identify complex social problems and innovative ways to address them, Patti Habeck, President of Feeding America Eastern Wisconsin, found an answer in lettuce. Along with Fork Farms of Appleton, Wis., the food bank is deploying small-scale, hydroponic farming systems at food pantries, schools and other…
As a graduate student at Yale University, Emma Stein marveled at the sheer convenience of meal preparation kits like Blue Apron and Plated. When it came time for her to develop her master’s thesis in public health, it wasn’t a stretch for her to wonder how such kits might be…
SNAP is by far the most effective tool available to help the country’s 40 million food-insecure individuals, so it’s natural that hunger-relief advocates always want to see SNAP participation and spending go up. For the past five years, however, the trend has been the opposite. The latest figures, released last…