January 17, 2012

Holiday Food Drop

Author: Santos Maldonado

Early on the bright and crisp morning of Saturday, December 17^th, three large Second Harvest trucks filled with 52,464 pounds of emergency food boxes and fresh produce got ready to roll toward six Orange County public schools. Second Harvest staff and management gathered in the parking lot to work out last minute details. Dave Krepcho, Second Harvest President and CEO, was first to rumble out of the lot and toward Hungerford Elementary School.

At the schools, families of students were already lined up in anticipation, as enthusiastic volunteers prepared for an orderly distribution. The energetic volunteers, young, old and in between, had been recruited and organized by Orange County Public Schools Food and Nutrition Services. They worked like a finely tuned orchestra, handling every surprise with patience, smiles and lots of laughs. Read More …

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

December 14, 2009

Partner Agencies Working Together to Save Thanksgiving

Author: Erin Gray

At Second Harvest we have over 600 partner agencies who together help to fight and end hunger.  One of our partner agencies in Orange County is Mt. Sinai Seventh-Day Adventist Church.  Their food pantry is open every Wednesday from 1 p.m. -6 p.m. to help feed individuals and families in need. They are one of our larger agencies, and they serve over 1000 individuals each month from their pantry.  We talked to Amy Walker from Mt. Sinai Seventh Day Adventist church for a success story, and she shared their Thanksgiving experience with us.

This year for Thanksgiving, the volunteers at the church were able to feed 2,501 of: Orlando’s low income residents, disabled, and the senior citizen, and homeless population in the Parramore district with a unique mobile outreach concept. Reaching out this way is particularly effective for those who have difficulty making it to a food pantry.

“Most of the people we were able to feed were because we knocked on their door. Some of the people we saw were amputees or blind and the rest was mostly senior citizens. The majority of them were in no condition to come out of their homes and stand in line especially in the rain. We had to go to them!” says Pastor Herman L. Davis.

Pastor Davis and his team spent two years redesigning their Thanksgiving distribution to feed many more people. Unlike past years the church had access to two large mobile units that can fully prepare and cook upward of 10,000 hot meals at any location it’s driven too. This allowed the volunteers to go to the people that needed their care the most, rather than have individuals to find them.

After an entire day of cooking prep, the Mt. Sinai Community Outreach Volunteer team was ready for their first stop. At 1 p.m. on Thanksgiving Eve served a menu of collard greens, mixed greens, curried egg plants, turkey breast, rice and gravy, baked whole turkey and mash potatoes, which some of the food for the meals were received from Second Harvest.  And they served 900 hot meals while people waited in light rain.   Later that day the team was joined by Loving Hut restaurant who had witnessed what the volunteers were accomplishing and wanted to join in and help. Loving Hut  prepared an additional 200 vegetarian meals consisting of egg rolls, rice, and vegetables.

On Thanksgiving Day a three man team; Pastor Davis, Ken Unick, and Dave Worrell distributed another 700 hot meals donated by the Salvation Army to the Maxwell Terrace community which are both partner agencies of Second Harvest Food Bank. A third wave of volunteers went out again on the Sunday immediately following Thanksgiving Day and fed an additional 501 people. While this initiative had been planned well in advance the outcome is still unbelievable.

The volunteers have returned to their bi-weekly Wednesday food distributions from 1 p.m.-5 p.m. where they package a week’s worth of groceries for the public at the church located at 2600 Orange Center Blvd. Orlando, FL 32805. “Mt. Sinai is full of compassionate people who are dedicated to touching the individual lives of the community, these volunteers are a blessing and serious about the impact of our outreach,” says member Timotheie Aurelien.

Erin Gray
Agency Relations Manager