Ensuring delivery
One by one, volunteers from across the county back their trucks up to the loading bay of the Butler County Food Bank on a regular basis at the Sunnyview complex.
The food bank's most active days are during the first week of the month, when the food bank's managers and volunteers offload new goods, sort them and load the outgoing food into the waiting vehicles going to food pantries.
Inside the warehouse walls, human hands and forklifts shift, turn and push pallets of food into the loading bay.
Occasionally, a box truck arrives and swallows up entire pallets from the forklift. At other times, a van or a pickup truck rolls up with its hatch or gate open, an assembly line forms and goods are passed between pairs of hands eager to help.
Janine Kennedy, executive director of the Alliance for Nonprofit Resources, called volunteers the lifeblood of the effort to feed the county. ANR oversees the county's only food bank. According to 2019 data collected by ANR, the food bank saw 3,300 families, equaling about 7,300 individuals, come through its network of pantries.Kennedy said there are 28 food pantries in the county's network, and she estimated that a majority of them are volunteer-run.“We really owe them a huge 'thank you.' The community owes them a huge 'thank you,' ” Kennedy stressed. “Every community should be thanking the volunteers at their food pantry because they're doing this out of the goodness of their own hearts.”
Kennedy urged more people to volunteer at local food pantries, pointing out how the county's food bank is receiving more food than ever due to new state assistance that began in 2019.According to Feeding America, the nation's largest domestic hunger-relief organization comprised of a network of 200 food banks across the country, a food bank safely stores millions of pounds of food to be delivered to local food programs.A food pantry is a smaller, more localized distribution center where families and individuals receive food often supplied to the pantry by a food bank.The local food bank's base amount of food is bought through the State Food Purchase Program, which provides the food bank with state funding with the caveat that money must go toward the purchase of nonperishable canned and dry foods to distribute throughout the county.“We have a list of items that are approved items,” Kennedy said. “They want it to be nutritional and nonsugary. That kind of thing.”Beyond the purchase program, the food bank receives additional products through the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Temporary Emergency Food Assistance Program. While the items are free to the food bank, the items it receives and the amount of those items are determined by the government.“We take everything they offer. A lot of it is the exact same thing we purchase,” Kennedy said.Kennedy said the food bank takes whatever it can get from the free commodities and uses the purchase program to provide balanced meals for struggling Butler County families.“We try not to give out random food items,” Kennedy said.
She explained how the food bank staff and volunteers split food among the county's network of pantries, adding how the food bank strives to ensure pantries are able to distribute balanced meals to community members seeking assistance.“We always try to give at least a juice, a fruit, vegetable, meat, pasta or grain, and then cereal.”New programs, more food to familiesWalking over to a large cooler, Kennedy opens the heavy door and points to stacked boxes of butter that came to the food bank as trade mitigation items. She explained how trade mitigation items also come from the USDA through a program that buys goods that were formerly headed overseas, but not shipped due to trade relations and tariffs.“Butter,” she said in awe. “We were excited. Some of our pantries were excited.”Kennedy said that starting last year, food banks across the nation began to receive trade mitigation items as long as they had the space to receive at least six pallets worth of the same item.She said butter typically is an expensive item that could cost about $110 per case as opposed to a case of vegetables that might cost around $15 per case.Kennedy said the trade mitigation items have expanded what the county food bank has to offer.“State food is our baseline. Normal USDA commodities is a bit above that. Trade mitigation is the next level that helps us give out some extra items,” she said.
Last year, the local nonprofit used $157,622 from the purchase program and distributed 137,570 pounds of food.Additionally, ANR received and distributed 88,499 pounds of food valued at $86,521 from the free USDA food commodities.During the past year, including pantries and warehouses, ANR volunteers spent more than 29,000 hours helping the hungry. Kennedy said to sustain the growth the food bank has seen, it will need as much help as it can get.“I would really like to recruit a pool of folks, men and women,” Kennedy said.
