Gleaners Food Bank
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
GLEANERS HARVEST Spring 2008 Dreaming of Full Pallets Taylor Client Choice Pantry to Open in June Pastor Amos Humphries, Vice President of Fish & Loaves, pictured above, is working with Gleaners to provide a greater choice of food for Downriver families. WHAt’s Read about INSIDE? Gleaners’ 30th anniversary year 1 Letters from our President accomplishments & Board Chair on page six. 2 Cover Story 5 Taste of the NFL 6 30th Anniversary Year in Review WHAT WE DO HOW WE DO IT 8 Can Man Comics Collect 26.5 million pounds of food Cultivate outstanding relationships a year, either donated from major with companies in the food processing 10 Partner Profiles food processors, retail chains and industry, including the Detroit Produce 12 Israeli Lawmakers volunteer food drives or purchased Terminal, and others. at deep discounts to meet the dietary 13 Women’s Power requirements of those served. Use an efficient, technologically Breakfast advanced system to collect, store and Distribute Empty Bowls food for 392,000 meals distribute food, with very little waste, every week to more than 400 partner through five strategically located 14 Bank Promotion agencies in six southeastern Michigan distribution centers in Livingston, counties. Partner agencies include Macomb, Oakland and Wayne Counties. Check Out Hunger shelters, soup kitchens, food pantries 15 Calendar of Events and senior citizen centers that provide Engage a professional staff and prepared meals or pantry supplies 15,000 dedicated volunteers to advance 16 You Can Help directly to hungry people. Gleaners’ mission of curing hunger. Board of Directors 17 Feed and educate 12,000 children a year Provide the best service possible to through programs such as Kids Café, our partner agencies. Gleaners delivers Gleaners Harvest costs KidSnack, Operation Frontline, and Kids almost half of its food — more than 13 30¢ per copy to print. Helping Kids. These programs provide million pounds — to partner agencies Photo credits: for free. The other half is distributed Melinda Clynes, Lisa Martin hot meals to children in after-school programs, snacks to at-risk children through a shared maintenance program ©2008 Gleaners Community Food Bank of Southeastern Michigan. in disadvantaged neighborhoods, and where partner contributions of 10¢ per All rights reserved. volunteer opportunities for young people pound of food offset the costs to learn about philanthropy. of transporting, handling and Inform the community and raise purchasing food. awareness about the causes of hunger, the people making a difference in fighting hunger, and the issues that still remain in feeding hungry neighbors. Pewabic Pottery Tile GLEANERS HARVEST SPRING 2008 1 Letter from our President ver the past year, Gleaners, like other food banks people concerned about not around the country, experienced a sharp decline having enough money to buy in donations from national sources causing a food to feed their families. I am Oreduction in our food inventories. At the same honored to stand with you in time, many of our friends and neighbors experienced this quest to cure hunger here job loss and foreclosure and now rely on Gleaners and in southeast Michigan. our partners to meet their most basic needs. Best Regards, I asked you to help us during this recent crisis and you came through in a heroic manner. Thank you for giving your time, talent and resources. Your generosity helped us to build up our inventories and provide over 20 Agostinho “Augie” Fernandes million meals to our hungry neighbors. President Your contributions have made a meaningful difference in this community and have alleviated worries for many Letter from our Board Chair s a former member of the board of the Food raised over $132,000 to make Bank of Oakland County, I am sometimes asked certain that families, children why I believed so strongly in the merger with and seniors had food during the AGleaners in 2006. I explain my determination holiday season. the same each time: I recognized that the merger would increase not only the efficiency of both organizations, I am thankful for the leadership but also the amount of food received by our hungry and guidance my fellow board neighbors in Oakland County. Additionally, I was very colleagues continue to demonstrate and feel grateful attracted to the quality and diversity of the volunteer for the opportunity to serve with them. leadership that had attached itself to Gleaners’ mission Sincerely, to fight hunger. Two years later, I’m so proud of our combined board. For example, when Gleaners faced a critical food shortage, the trustees stepped up by reaching out to Pat Berwanger their friends and associates to ask for help. They also Board Chair put their own dollars on the table and in one week WWW.GCFB.ORG 2 Full Pallets, More Choice for Hungry Downriver Families Taylor Client Choice Pantry Slated to Open in June GLEANERS HARVEST SPRING 2008 3 astor Amos Humphries of Gilead Baptist Church in WHAT IS A Taylor looks forward to the day when stacks of empty blue pallets at the soon-to-be-built Taylor Client Choice “client chOice” paNTRY? PPantry are loaded with food. Until then, folks from Gilead Baptist and 30 other Downriver churches are working together as the collaborative organization Fish & Loaves to The “client choice” concept is a new make sure food gets to those who need it. The nonprofit model for delivering emergency group currently sponsors outreach and food distribution food where clients select their own events twice a year and makes sure at least one church food, much like a grocery store. pantry is open every day of the week. The model reduces waste, improves But Humphries and his Fish & Loaves colleagues want a access to food, and provides a better, stronger food network for Downriver families. That’s dignified setting for families and why they’re partnering with Gleaners Taylor Distribution working poor people to access food Center to open the Taylor Client Choice Pantry this summer. and other services. Fish & Loaves, through its faith-based volunteer network, will manage day-to-day operations of the pantry — ordering food, stocking shelves, helping customers, and maintaining Studies indicate that client choice equipment — while Gleaners will oversee pantry design pantries are cheaper to operate and construction. annually than traditional pantries (where fixed containers of boxed The partnership means that “We provide or bagged food are given with little very soon struggling Downriver spiritual care and families will have a choice: a or no choice), providing savings in choice not to be hungry, and counseling, but we staff and transportation and, most a choice about what food best need resources for importantly, eliminating the need meets their own family’s needs. long-term care and for multiple facilities. These savings will be enjoyed at Taylor Client Currently, four Downriver to build a network churches have emergency food of support.” Choice Pantry as it provides food pantries, but, says Humphries, to underserved areas of Downriver, they cannot help with an —Pastor Amos Humphries including Taylor, Dearborn Heights, individual or family’s ongoing Romulus, Southgate, Allen Park food needs. “We provide spiritual and Brownstown. care and counseling, but we need resources for long-term care and to build a network of support,” says Humphries, who saw the number of people using Gilead Baptist’s Food Pantry double from 114 to 228 over the past year. Humphries observes regional joblessness causing a shift in the type of people seeking help. “It used to be more single moms and occasionally men who were homeless. Now we’re seeing men with families coming in and asking for food,” says Humphries. Strapped families are struggling to meet their basic needs, and many times are one crisis away from losing their cars and their homes. continued on page 4 WWW.GCFB.ORG 4 Success at Full Pallets (continued from page 3) Livingston County’s Shared Harvest Client Joan Forrest, a Fish & Loaves board “Taylor Client Choice Pantry has Choice Pantry member and coordinator of Our already been a rallying point for Lady of Angels food pantry, says the community,” says Humphries. that she has seen an 11 percent “We’re creating a new resource Shared Harvest is a client choice increase in the number of people for families and the working poor pantry in Livingston County that served over the past year. She looks and an outlet for donations and opened in 1999 and is jointly forward to referring individuals volunteers — a place for Downriver operated by Gleaners and a and families to the Taylor Client people to help their own neighbors.” network of 400 volunteers from Choice Pantry. “It will be a great faith-based organizations. Shared supplement for people who are Taylor Client Choice Pantry is Harvest is one of seven regularly really stretched for food — another slated to open in June and will operating pantries in Livingston place to have their needs met.” be located on North Line Road, and accounts for 70 percent of between Beech Daly and Telegraph all Gleaners food distributed in Wraparound services operating in Taylor, adjacent to the Gleaners that county. A recent independent from the pantry will include Taylor Distribution Center. For more study on Shared Harvest revealed Operation Frontline nutrition information, call John Kastler at these results: education programs, food stamp 866-GLEANER, ext. 240. outreach activities, and, eventually, 90% of clients rate the ability to employment education and job select needed and desired grocery