The Food Bank of Western Massachusetts, Inc.

Since 1983, Brown Bag: Food for Elders has been one of The Food Bank’s core programs made possible by the work of nearly 700 volunteers, most of them elders themselves. 5,000 elders with lower incomes across Western Massachusetts’ four counties participate in the program, receiving a free bag of healthy groceries once a month at one of 100 distribution sites in towns and cities in our region.

Nutritious Brown Bag groceries enable elders to make easy meals and eat a balanced diet, which is especially important to mitigate nutrition-related diseases such as diabetes and hypertension.

The Food Bank’s SNAP Outreach and Enrollment assists food insecure households to determine their eligibility and to apply for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits (formerly known as food stamps). This 100% federal resource is underutilized in Massachusetts. Last fiscal year, we assisted 857 individuals to apply for monthly SNAP benefits of which 666 individuals received benefits representing a total economic impact of $1.6 million annually to our local economy.

Our nutrition education encourages participants to purchase healthy food with their SNAP benefits, which may only be used to purchase unprepared food items. Federal and state authorities closely monitor SNAP for fraud and abuse.

The Mobile Food Bank distributed bi-weekly or monthly healthy food, primarily fresh produce, directly to 29,476 (unduplicated) individuals at 26 distribution sites in high-poverty areas with high rates of child food insecurity. In fiscal year 2021, this program distributed almost 1.7 million lbs. -- the equivalent of 1.5 million meals.

Hunger is not simply about the lack of food; it is also about the lack of nutritious food.

Households that experience or are at risk of hunger are also likely to be malnourished due to lack of access to nutritious foods such as lean meats, fruits, vegetables and whole grains. A lack of adequate transportation and full-line grocery stores within walking distance, combined with an abundance of fast food restaurants and processed foods, have created "food deserts” in low-income areas, with a measurable negative impact on health and nutrition. These characteristics are highly correlated with increased rates of obesity, diabetes, heart disease, premature death, and other health problems.

The Food Bank’s Nutrition program offers thousands of food-insecure residents a variety of approaches to help them develop healthier eating and shopping habits.

Taste tests and healthy recipes: Food Bank staff offer nutrition consultation during food distribution hours at food pantries, meal sites, Brown Bag for Elders sites and our Mobile Food Bank. When residents visit these sites for meals or groceries, they can also access resources including basic nutrition tips and healthy meal planning suggestions; taste healthy recipes prepared with food pantry ingredients; and get recipes to combine these ingredients with more whole grains, lean proteins, vegetables, and spices.

Nutrition Education: Free workshops on basic nutrition and healthy eating serve the staff of emergency food programs to guide them in offering better choices to their visitors; help community members at emergency food sites provide more nutritious food to their families; and assist elders at our Brown Bag sites in fulfilling their unique dietary needs.

ServSafe: The Food Bank regularly offers ServSafe certification training courses to member agency staff at a significantly discounted rate, to ensure that staff at food preparation sites have received the required food safety training.

Nutrition Tips: "From the Food Bank Kitchen” articles are written bi-weekly and are included in The Food Bank’s NewsBites publication sent to all member agencies. These are also posted on our website and provide a great source for easy, healthy nutrition ideas and recipes.

Agency Relations is responsible for recruiting and screening new local feeding programs to become members of The Food Bank's programs and for monitoring and inspecting our +170 existing member programs of our region's emergency food network

Through Agency Relations, we also provide capacity building grants, workshops, networking support to share best practices, and guidance to develop growth plans in order to receive financial support to achieve them.

At The Food Bank, we lead the community to end hunger by advocating for change, bringing issues of hunger to the forefront and facilitating collaboration to advance long-term solutions. We regularly educate the public through speaking engagements, the media and social media. We also actively recruit volunteers to participate in our many programs and learn about The Food Bank and hunger in our region.

In 2017, we launched a Coalition to End Hunger, involving diverse thought leaders and organizations from across our region based on an Action Plan to end hunger prepared by a Task Force during a one-year planning process. The Coalition's three priorities are: 1) Erase the stigma associated with hunger; 2) Develop a mechanism to provide integrated services for those who need them (see "Food Insecurity Screening and Referral Initiative"), and 3) Advocate for public policy that will address the underlying causes of hunger. Our public policy priorities are located on our website (www.foodbankwma.org) under "Advocate" in the "Get Involved" section.

For more information on the Coalition to End Hunger, visit: www.coalitiontoendhunger.org

Since 1992, The Food Bank has owned a 59-acre farm in Hadley, MA -- the first food bank to do so in the country. We partner with a local farmer who grows organic vegetables on 34 acres. In lieu of cash rent, we receive about 113,000 lbs. of fresh organic vegetables that we distribute to households facing food insecurity.

In March 2020, The Food Bank purchased a second Food Bank Farm. This new 142-acre farm builds on our unique approach to food banking -- an investment in local farmland to strengthen our local food economy while also providing a reliable source of healthy organic food for those who need it most. In addition to receiving a share of the harvest, in this case the farmers will sell most of their share of the harvest to schools in high-poverty school districts to feed high-risk children.

In 2021, we piloted a "no-till" farming initiative to engage volunteers in learning about this sustainable method of growing vegetables that are distributed to a local food pantry.

Spawned by the Coalition to End Hunger in 2017, this initiative now partners with several hospitals and community health centers to assist patients and their families who are food insecure. Health providers used a nationally-validated two-question food insecurity screening to refer patient families to The Food Bank who screen positive.

The Food Bank provides these families with access to healthy food in their neighborhood, nutrition education, assistance with SNAP applications (if not already receiving SNAP benefits), food vouchers, and direct referrals to wrap around services at other social service organizations that assist them with housing, education, job training and many other underlying causes of hunger.