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

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

We couldn’t accomplish our mission of fighting hunger in Central Florida without our partner agencies. The majority of our partners are food pantries of various types and sizes.

Calvary Outreach Center in Winter Park is one of our larger Food Pantries that serve around 2000 people a month.  Recently Calvary Outreach Center moved their location to the church grounds at Calvary Assembly.

The new location gives them a lot more room for their pantry and counseling services. They have also built a class room attached to the building, which they plan on using to teach their clients that use the pantry’s services.

Calvary is hosting the “Money for Food” course that the ADEPT program is offering.  Hosting the classes for his clients is helping them develop the new ways to stretch their food dollar even further.

It is great that Calvary is so willing to partner with us in new ways, beyond distributing food to the clients.

Every time we visit Calvary, Pastor Clint Wallace has some new data to share with us. Here’s his latest update:

“From 2005 thru 2009, thanks to the Second Harvest Food Bank of Central Florida, Calvary’s Outreach Center and Transitions Ministry distributed 12,464 family bags of food, 13,494 homeless bag lunches, 9,177 hot lunches, and 1,982 thanksgiving turkeys .

With the average meal weighing 1.5 pounds, we estimate that in those 5 years, Calvary’s Outreach Center & Transitions Ministry distributed 74,505 pounds of food, translating to over 37 tons. Without Second Harvest we would have only distributed around 9 tons of food.”

Calvary Outreach Center, and all of our Partner Agencies are doing such a wonderful job in the fight against hunger in Central Florida.

Erin Gray
Agency Relations Manager

Nothing is more important at Second Harvest than ensuring that the food we provide is safe for consumption.  There are numerous ways that food can become unsafe throughout its life including improper storage, handling of food and contamination.

In an effort to combat these risk factors, each of our Partner Agencies is required to attend a Safe Staff Food Handler Certification Program. This training is developed by the Florida Restaurant and Lodging Association and is the same training that is required by Florida law for public food service workers to complete.

The training is administered by a Florida Certified Professional Food Manager, who is also a staff member. The contents of the training address such topics as cleaning and sanitizing, controlling pests, food borne illnesses and the importance of personal hygiene.

The certification is valid for three years at which time the course must be repeated. By providing our Partner Agencies with basic food safety training we hope to provide them with as many preventative techniques as possible to minimize food safety risks and ensure the health and safety of the clientele receiving our food.

written by:
Whitney James, ADEPT & Special Projects Manager

Every four years, all of the Feeding America food banks participate in the Hunger in America Study. On February 8th we will be holding a press conference and reception to share the Central Florida results. Click here to RSVP >>

The Study

The study is broken up into two parts. The first part is a questionnaire mailed to each of our Partner Feeding Programs. We have 530 partner agencies and it takes quite a bit of coordination keep track of who’s completed the survey and determine if it was a paper form or online.

The second part of the survey is much more resource intensive. We have to visit a random group of our agencies and then complete an 80 question survey with a random sample of clients from the people present. Because this is more work than we can accomplish with just staff, we rely almost exclusively on volunteers for the interview.

Once all of the surveys are complete, we turn them in to Feeding America to process the results. One year later, we get a really large email with our results and put together our Hunger in Central Florida 2010 books. It is a long process, but the information learned about local hunger is invaluable.

Brady Koch
Director of Agency Relations & Programs