Virginia Peninsula Foodbank

Programs: Donated food distribution program:twenty-nine years of servicesince its inception in 1986, the virginia peninsula foodbank has distributed over 153 million pounds of food to benefit the needy and food insecure across the greater peninsula. This equates to $260. 4 million worth of food at a wholesale value of $1. 70 per pound this year, as determined annually by feeding america, the national network of foodbanks. During the 2014-2015 fiscal year, the foodbank distributed almost 11. 3 million pounds of food throughout its nine-jurisdiction service area across the greater peninsula. This service area encompasses the cities of hampton, newport news, poquoson and williamsburg and the counties of gloucester, james city, mathews, surry and york. Providing food securitythe virginia peninsula foodbank's food distribution program serves as a regional clearinghouse for donated and purchased food as well as related items. In turn, these items are distributed to qualified nonprofit organizations providing food to the less fortunate across the greater peninsula. The foodbank acquires surpluses and potentially recoverable discards gathered from local retailers, wholesalers, distributors, food industry manufacturers, brokers, grocery stores, gleaning projects and individual donors from throughout our service area. Further, food made available for the peninsula's needy residents is also received from national donors through feeding america. Also, first quality food items are obtained from the usda through the emergency food assistance program (tefap), collected in food drives supported by numerous organizations and individuals, as well as purchased with fema (federal emergency management agency) and other private grant funding. The foodbank then distributes these goods to emergency food pantries, soup kitchens, shelters and other nonprofit agencies which assist peninsula residents who fall into need each day. In 2014-2015, the foodbank provided food to approximately 200 nonprofit member agencies.

share program:the share (self-help and resource exchange) program was implemented by the virginia peninsula foodbank in january 2002. Share is a national network of non-profit organizations dedicated to providing quality monthly food packages at a reduced cost, promoting volunteer service in our communities and the building of partnerships between community organizations. For $20 and two hours of community service, share offers a nutritious food package worth approximately $45. During fy 2014-2015, almost 6,900 packages were distributed through this program.

kid's cafe program and food for kids backpack program:the foodbank also extends nutrition, food safety and self-sufficiency training to low income individuals and member agency representatives through its nutrition/self-sufficiency training program. In 2014-2015, this program provided this training to 22,706 high risk, low income individuals, empowering them to strive towards meeting their own nutritional, financial and self-actualization goals. The kid's cafe program provides a nutritious afternoon meal or snack to children in after school programs in a safe, caring and learning environment. There were 28 kids cafe sites that served 136,585 hot meals and 27,843 nutritious snacks to an average of 1,239 children weekly during this past school year. The culinary training program is designed to help disadvantaged adults gain culinary skills, jobs, and self-reliance through a free training program that will also benefit and expand the food support for our kids cafe program. The 12-week curriculum trains individuals in basic culinary skills to include servsafe manager certification, sanitary practices, job skills, resume development, time management, teamwork, leadership, decision-making skills, goal setting, and conflict resolution. Trainees participate in an intensive academic and hands-on training environment that will produce a graduate ready to work immediately in the food service industry as a successful employee. The program's goal is to graduate culinary interns while at the same time increasing the number of meals available for the kids cafe program. This year we graduated 20 students from this program and they prepared 189,478 meals. In 2005, our backpack program was implemented through partnerships with three title i elementary schools (defined as schools with a population of greater than 50% of the children receiving free or reduced price federal school meals). This year growth continued for us to be able to serve twenty-seven elementary schools through this program. Weekly, we provided nutritious bags of food for 1,450 children. These distributions consisted of a variety of produce, bread and other kid friendly, yet nutritious food items, and amounted to 45,723 backpacks.

other programs benefiting peninsula residents:the bread distribution program distributes donated bread, produce and other perishables from food retailers and bakeries, amounting to over 2,969,000 pounds or an average of over 57,000 pounds of food products weekly this year. The mobile pantry program delivered over 483,000 pounds of produce, perishable items, and usda tefap commodities to low income, senior housing, and community projects this fiscal year. Overall for the year, 1,267,900 pounds of usda tefap commodities were distributed. The neighbor to neighbor program links prepared and perishable food donors directly with qualified agencies who have received the appropriate safe food handling training. Through this program, almost 2,809,000 pounds of food were collected and distributed in fy 2014-2015. All of these phenomenal programs could not be accomplished without the help and assistance of dedicated volunteers. A total of approximately 31,800 volunteer hours were contributed from throughout our service area, saving almost $792,000 in salaries (based on a value of $24. 90/hour in virginia as determined by the independent sector) in support of the foodbank and its hunger relief programs across the greater peninsula in fy 2014-2015.