Seattle Food Committee Van Tour 2014

Members of the Washington Food Coalition staff enjoyed the Seattle Food Committee 2014 Van Tour yesterday. We visited five Seattle agencies working to alleviate hunger in our community. Learning how each of these programs feeds hungry folks was intriguing and inspiring. Here are the sites we visited and a little of what we learned!

Ballard Food Bank:

The tour began in the waiting room of the Ballard Food Bank. We sat in the comfy chairs and enjoyed our breakfast goodies while Jen Muzia, the new executive director, greeted us and told us about the food bank’s operations. Next we entered a big room full of shelves, refrigerators, freezers and shopping carts. The Ballard Food Bank has recently adopted the shopping model for food distribution where food bank customers have a choice between products and a cart to put them in. Along with this awesome supermarket style food bank, the Ballard Food Bank provides many other important services. They offer hygiene products, baby supplies, emergency financial assistance and their address. This means that folks who do not have a home address can have their mail sent to the Ballard Food Bank and then come pick it up!

YouthCare at the Orion Center:

Next we travelled downtown to visit the local non-profit YouthCare. YouthCare not only feeds healthy food to hungry youth, but also provides job training, assists in GED certification, mental health and substance abuse counseling, legal help, and sleeps about 20 youth on the floor every night. 363 youth in Seattle utilized their services this month, and since 2007 the amount of homeless youth has doubled. YouthCare does street outreach to provide basic necessities to youth on the street and promote their services. The focus of YouthCare is to create mentoring relationships with youth to foster health, learning and self-sufficiency.  

Millionair Club Charity:

Right around lunchtime we travelled over to the Millionair Club Charity. Similar to YouthCare, the Millionair Club is designed to train folks to get jobs. Getting someone a job is their main focus, which is then followed by securing permanent housing. But to get a job one needs to “break barriers” that hard times can bring on. The Millionair Club helps people develop basic job skills- like resume building, meet health needs- like the need for glasses, and get hunger off of their minds by filling their bellies. The Millionair Club has served over 11 million meals since its creation in 1921. Virtually all of their food is donated through corporate partnerships and their hydroponic garden in the basement. 51% of their participants attended college in their lives, so the Millionair Club truly helps one restart when life has dealt a very unfortunate hand of cards.

St. Vincent de Paul:

The tour then caravanned south to St. Vincent de Paul. Their large space is a valuable asset in the emergency food world and they filled it with a high-tech food distribution setup and many other services. They have a computerized barcode database system which stores the name of the customer, their zip code and family size for quick registration and help getting food. They also have a helpline which refers people in need to resources to help with rent, utilities and food. Housed under the same roof is also their legal help center. One very valuable piece of infrastructure is their refrigerated truck, which can be plugged in to keep perishables and produce good over the weekend before distribution. The tour members were a “protip”- a food bank needs to have a good friendly driver who is in-tune and invested in the food bank. This way they can help procure the best food through valuable relationships.

White Center Food Bank and Garden:

Our last stop was the White Center Food Bank and their Giving Garden. We entered the comfortable and welcoming waiting room and learned about the history and day to day functioning of the food bank. One special program we learned about is their Healthy Food Gift Certificate (see picture). These certificates are worth $5 in produce, and are wildly successful. White Center Food Bank really focuses on healthy and quality foods for their customers. They purchase meats, eggs and dairy and even grow some of their own produce! In between the food distribution building and the baby pantry building is a series of raised beds blooming with life. To ensure that fresh vegetables and fruit can become a part of anyone’s lifestyle, the food bank offers a series of cooking classes designed using the food currently available to customers. The White Center Food Bank identified less mobile elderly individuals as a population in need of their services, and has outfitted a mobile food bank truck to deliver food. In all, the White Center Food Bank offers outstanding assistance to people of all ages.

It was truly inspiring to see all of the work being done around Seattle to keep people fed and healthy. And the breadth of other services that these agencies offered in conjunction with food assistance is remarkable. Thank you to the Seattle Food Committee for organizing this event!