Virginia Peninsula Foodbank

Thirty-six years of service of providing food security:since its inception in 1986, Virginia Peninsula Foodbank has distributed almost 236 million pounds of food to benefit the needy and food insecure across the greater Virginia Peninsula. This equates to $361 million worth of food at a wholesale value of $1.53 per pound this year, as determined annually by feeding america, the national network of foodbanks. During the 2021-2022 fiscal year, the Foodbank distributed almost 8.8 million pounds of food throughout its nine-jurisdiction service area across the greater Virginia 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.virginia Peninsula Foodbank's food distribution program serves as a regional clearinghouse for donated and purchased food as well as related items. These items are distributed to qualified nonprofit organizations providing food to the less fortunate across the greater Virginia 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. First quality food items are obtained from the usda through the emergency food assistance program (tefap) and the commodity supplemental food program (csfp), 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 fy 2021-2022, the Foodbank provided food to over 140 nonprofit member agencies.

Other programs benefiting Peninsula residents:the mobile pantry program delivered almost 3,000,000 pounds of produce, perishable items, and usda tefap commodities to low income, senior housing, and community projects this fiscal year. Overall for the year, 2,156,000 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, over 2,422,000 pounds of food were collected and distributed in fy 2021-2022. All of these phenomenal programs could not be accomplished without the help and assistance of dedicated volunteers. A total of approximately 24,300 volunteer hours were contributed from throughout our service area, saving over $748,000 in salaries (based on a value of $30.80/hour in Virginia as determined by the independent sector) in support of the Foodbank and its hunger relief programs across the greater Virginia Peninsula in fy 2021-2022.

The kid's cafe program normally provides nutritious afternoon meals and snacks to children in after school programs in a safe, caring, and learning environment. 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. Our backpack for kids program was implemented in 2005 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). We distributed backpack bags of food to over 1,100 children most weeks at dozens of locations across the greater Virginia Peninsula. These distributions consisted of a variety of kid friendly, yet nutritious, food items and amounted to over 38,000 bags.