Helping Hands Food Bank Wins Excellence Award!
Helping Hands Food Bank was one of five agency partners to receive the Agency Excellence Award at our recent Partner Agency Conference. We were thrilled to present them with this award in recognition of the outstanding work they are doing to end hunger and meet the needs of their community.
Helping Hands’ goal to increase access to nutritious food grew in some big ways this year! They expanded their distribution days from one day a week to four days each week. They also extended their hours to add an evening distribution in order to help more working families in the community. In the first month adding these hours, they were able to serve 900 new individuals.
Helping Hands also started a food pantry in three new schools, bringing their total to seven. They are now at the Skagit Valley Community College and two new alternative high schools. They also extended their kids backpack program by adding another town to service. This brings in 200 new children to their program every week. They have also partnered with the local newspaper to directly deliver 500 bags of food to the homes of the families on their weekend program.
By expanding their hours, Helping Hands has been able to cut down their food waste. They used to lose 30% of their food to spoilage, but they are now able to use the food they receive as soon as it comes into the warehouse. This allows them to hand out food at an even faster rate.
All these efforts are helping to fill a huge gap for working families and children in need. Thank you for all your hard work Helping Hands!