Archive for the 'Feeding Partner Stories' Category

December 28, 2010

Meet our Partners: The Place of Comfort

Author: Erin Gray

Every year, Second Harvest provides food to approximately 731,900 individuals through our partner agencies. I want to take a moment to profile one of our nearly 500 partner agencies: The Place of Comfort.

The Place of Comfort has four locations that serve Osceola, Orange, Lake and Seminole Counties.  I went to the Seminole County location to talk to them and see how their organization operates.

A large portion of their clients that are afflicted with HIV/AIDS.  The agency averages 2,000 total clients for all four counties served every month.  The Place of Comfort offers other services for the HIV/ AIDS clients along with food assistance, such as rent assistance, utility assistance and counseling.

For Thanksgiving, they distributed over 200 turkey baskets for people and families affected with HIV/AIDS.  The Place of Comfort works in collaboration to purchase the turkey baskets with one of our other Partner Agencies Joy MCC in Orlando.

For Christmas, The Place of Comfort conducted a toy drive at Regions Bank in Longwood.  The toy drive helped approximately 25 of their HIV/AIDS families and children.

If you are interested in learning more about Place of Comfort, please visit http://www.placeofcomfort.org/ 

Erin Gray
Agency Relations Manager

December 16, 2010

Meet our Feeding Partner: The Sharing Center

Author: Erin Gray

Last year, Second Harvest utilized  nearly 500 partner feeding programs to distribute 24 million pounds of food into the community. The Sharing Center is doing their part to fight hunger in Seminole County.

The Sharing Center has locations in Sanford and in Longwood. Last year alone, they helped over 51,000 people with food and other services.   I visited the Longwood location the second week of December and met with Don Warner, the Pantry Supervisor of both sites.
The holidays are especially busy at The Sharing Center. For Thanksgiving, they distributed 2000 baskets, and plan on distributing the same amount for the Christmas Holiday.  In addition to the Christmas baskets, The Sharing Center started a “shoe card” program this year.  The Sharing Center has been purchasing and receiving donated gift cards to discount shoe stores.  They will give gift cards to each child living in the household, up to 19 years old.

The Sharing Center has a large group of volunteers that help out at the pantry.  Many of the volunteers go back to the pantry to volunteer on a repetitive basis because of the enjoyment they receive.

If you are interested in learning more about the Sharing Center please follow this link:  http://www.thesharingcenter.org/

Erin Gray
Agency Relations Manager

September 21, 2010

Agency Spotlight: Collins Cupboard

Author: Maria Diestro

This week we are spotlighting Collins Cupboard at the Lighthouse Christian Church in Deland, Florida, run by Robin and Gene Campbell. The pantry distributed food to 674 households and 2334 individual people last quarter.

Collins Cupboard sends volunteers every Monday to the Volusia Branch warehouse to help unload and put away the truckload of food that arrives from Second Harvest’s main facility in Orlando. We have never asked for this, but are grateful for the help.  

In addition to being a first class partner agency, Collins Cupboard falls into the super volunteer category. They volunteer for Scouting for Food, Wesh TV’s Share your Christmas and pretty much anytime we could use a hand … they are always ready to help us out.

 Here are some photos of Collins Cupboard in action:

 Below is a photo of them unloading a trailer full of food.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
A happy recipient leaving the pantry with bags of food.

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 
Collins Cupboard crew serving a spaghetti meal. The proceeds went to their pantry. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Second Harvest Food Bank distributes food to over 600 feeding partners in six counties. Collins Cupboard is 1 of 90 agencies that we currently partner with in Volusia County. Their passion for fighting hunger and helping their neighbors is truly unmatched. We salute Robin and Gene and all their friends at Collins Cupboard, and all our partner agencies in Volusia County—keep up the incredible work!

 If you are a Volusia resident and would like to visit our facility, and a learn a little bit more about hunger in Central Florida, please sign up for a Food for Thought Tour at our Volusia branch.

Maria Diestro
Online Services and Communications Manager

June 23, 2010

2010 Customer Service Survey: Identifying Opportunities to Build Capacity

Author: Brady Koch

I continue to review the responses that have been returned for the Customer Service Survey and want to share more results with you.

One of the main reasons we have our ADEPT program is to provide our agencies with opportunities to learn more about building the sustainability and outreach of their agencies. In order to assess our focus areas we asked you what was your biggest barriers to distributing more food.

Here’s the results:

Question 9: What are some of the issues that limit the amount of food you receive from Second Harvest?

All the Time= 1
Sometimes = 2
Rarely= 3
Never= 4

Transportation                                     3.15

Volunteer/Staff Availability                    3.18

Fundraising/Revenue shortfalls              2.54

Lack of dry storage space                    3.01

Lack of refrigerator/freezer space          2.83

Availability of appointment times           3.28

Warehouse hours of operation              3.46

 

Brady Koch
Director of Agency Relations & Programs

June 15, 2010

Customer Service Survey 2010: Client Frequency

Author: Brady Koch

We’ve just completed our Customer Service Survey of our 600+ partner feeding programs. We use this tool to evaluate our service to the feeding programs who access our warehouse. It helps us make certain that we’re acting as good stewards to all of the donations that the community provides to us.

There was so much participation, that the amount of data we have to sort through is amazing. Over the next couple of blog entries, I’ll share with you some of the results of our survey so that everyone can benefit from the project.

When a new agency joins the food bank they often times ask how often they should distribute food. We encourage these new feeding programs to contact some of our veteran partner agencies to find a distribution frequency that is best for them.

We would hope that all of our partners have a sustainability plan that makes certain that they are able to fight hunger in the long run. Overall we encourage them to set some kind of limit so as not to overburden your volunteers and budgets.

Here’s what the results of our survey told us:

Question 4a: How often can clients come to your pantry?

Once per month                      38%
Once per week                        23%
Twice per month                      12%
As Needed                              10%
Once every two months             4%
Other                                      13%

Look for more survey results in the coming weeks.

Brady Koch
Director of Agency Relations & Programs