At Second Harvest Food Bank of Central Florida, we’re proud of our accomplishments in recent years.  In the face of unprecedented need, Second Harvest served 732,000 people in 2009/2010 … a 152 percent increase from the last four years.

And audits show that for every dollar donated, we distribute up to $9 worth of groceries to hungry families in Central Florida.

Interestingly, our annual report – which chronicles all of the previous year’s achievements – won an honor of its own this past weekend. We’re proud to announce that our 2009/2010 report recently took home a Gold Addy award for its exceptional design at the American Advertising Federation Orlando reception.

A big thank you goes out to Costa DeVault for designing the report – and to our many community and individual supporters that made the accomplishments in it possible.

Greg Higgerson
CFRE Vice-President, Development Second Harvest Food Bank of Central Florida

Over the last year, we have partnered with an organization called Teen Xpress to help get food into households of Orange County teens experiencing food insecurity. Teen Xpress, a program of the Howard Phillips Center for Children & Families, is a mobile health unit that provides free medical and mental health care, as well as nutrition counseling, to at-risk youth in Orange County neighborhoods.

The “teen pack” is composed of a variety of non-perishable food items such as peanut butter, jelly, rice, tuna, shelf-stable milk, and canned fruits and vegetables.

Teen Xpress Program Manager, Rita Soza-Vento, shared that the teen pack “has allowed kids to see what a healthy portioned size meal looks like. Many of the kids who we identified as needing the teen pack through the mobile unit were diagnosed with iron deficiency. The teen pack addressed and improved many of their iron levels as many of our kids were not eating. It served as either a meal replacement or provided a snack during the day.”

Teen packs are hand delivered by Teen Xpress’s Community Care Coordinator to the teens’ homes. This home-delivered approach helps the program connect with the teens’ families and reduces the stigma associated with being a food recipient.

Since the start of this partnership, Teen Xpress has distributed more than 1,000 teen packs to Orange County teens in the Parramore and Pine Hills neighborhoods. The teen pack is a component of Teen Xpress’s Healthy Me Initiative, which teaches youth how to make healthy choices within their environment. To read more about Teen Xpress, click here.

Maria Ali, RD, LD/N
Nutrition Manager

From the time we are young, and throughout our lives, nearly all of us aspire to ‘change the world’ in some fashion. And thankfully, many people accomplish that important goal in different measures and in different ways. Some seem almost destined to do great things from the time they are born, and others … well, not so much.  I’d like to share with you the story of one truly remarkable man who falls squarely into that ‘not so much’ category.

I’ll warn you in advance that it’s a fairly long read for a blog entry, but I hope you will indulge me and settle in with it anyway. When you’re finished, I believe that you’ll not only be fascinated by the man himself, but that you’ll have a deeper understanding of the concepts and origins of what we call “food banking” as well.

So … Have you ever heard of John Van Hengle? Doesn’t sound familiar? I’m not surprised. He lived a mostly unremarkable life, right up until the point where he changed the world. But I promise to get back to that part later. First, you should know just a bit about the man’s early life.

John Van Hengle was born in Wisconsin in 1922. His family managed to survive The Great Depression reasonably well, and he was eventually able to attend college. After college, Van Hengle moved to California to become a self-described ‘beach bum.’  For a number of years, he held down a fairly wide variety of jobs in order to pay bills. He worked variously as a magazine publicist, ad agency man, sales manager for an archery equipment company, and even designed plastic raincoats at one point. After meeting a beautiful young model in Hollywood, Van Hengle married and became the father of two children.

Soon after, however, his wife left, took the children, and the marriage ended. This marked the start of a downward spiral. While his previous jobs had been more professional in nature, a deeply discouraged Van Hengle began to take more menial jobs to survive. He worked in a rock quarry for a time, and then at a factory. Serious injuries were sustained in a workplace fight that resulted in spinal surgery.  Unfortunately, the operation produced a locked neck, palsy, and weakened legs.  Following a doctor’s advice to move to a warmer, drier climate for his health, Van Hengle relocated to Phoenix, Arizona in the early 1960s.

Van Hengle set about the task of rehabilitating his body by swimming at the YMCA in Phoenix, and gradually gained strength. With little income, he lived at the YMCA, and began using the services of a nearby St. Vincent de Paul soup kitchen program for his meals. He also began reading the Bible, and found that certain passages dealing with helping the poor and needy seemed to light up on the page like a neon sign.

Van Hengle began to volunteer at the soup kitchen he had been using, and eventually got a job at age 44 as ‘The oldest public pool lifeguard in Phoenix.”  For a time, he was part of a group of volunteers who would visit the dumpsters of local food companies to gather whatever could be found there for use at the kitchen.   The task of separating good food from rancid food was daunting, yet many organizations in town seemed to be competing fiercely with one another for the products.

One day, Van Hengle met a mother of ten children in the dumpster whose husband was in prison. The woman’s story inspired him to walk into the fresh produce distribution company and ask whether the food being dumped could be ‘picked up before it went bad’ regularly by the soup kitchen instead.  He described to the Manager how the soup kitchen safely handled and re-prepared the food for people in need, and also shared a few stories of real people.  The company agreed to help.  Soon, Van Hengle was picking up more fresh fruits and vegetables on a daily basis than the soup kitchen could possibly use. Rather than let the extra food go to waste, however, Van Hengle called a few other local feeding programs who were thrilled to receive the additional products. Both the soup kitchen and the other programs found that they could help far more people in need as a result of the increased flow of unspoiled food.

Van Hengle went to other food companies in the Phoenix area, and was able to convince them that the benefits of donating—a tax deduction and reduced dumping costs—were significantly better than throwing food away. Soon he found that most of his time was being spent ‘giving away’ the bountiful extra product donations to feeding programs throughout the community, who had begun lining up in great numbers to take them. Van Hengle began looking for donated space from which to store and distribute the food.

St. Mary’s Basilica Church of Phoenix stepped up and gave $3000 and an abandoned building for Van Hengle’s new  operation. The program was named St. Mary’s Food Bank, and became the first-ever true “Food Bank” organization in history.  The model was both simple and efficient: Van Hengle offered local nonprofit feeding programs incredible and abundant new donated food resources that they simply couldn’t have gotten on their own. At the same time, he offered food companies a way to reduce their dumping costs, while providing a tax deduction and assurances that food was being handled safely. Just as important, companies were assured that the food they donated would never, ever be ‘sold’ to people in need.  Dozens of local nonprofit feeding programs clamored to get donated food from this new ‘Food Bank,’ and many, many more struggling families in Phoenix were helped.

A remarkable story even if it stopped right there, don’t you think? But it didn’t.  Other cities around the nation had begun to take notice of this incredible and efficient use of existing food resources to help people living in poverty. After all, there wasn’t any shortage of ‘extra’ food in America; only a lack of cost-efficient ways to make it available to people who needed help. At least a dozen other ‘food banks’ sprung up in American cities in the late 1960s as a result.    When approached by the Federal Government to turn his idea into a government program, however, Van Hengle refused. He disliked government red tape, and saw the need for food banks to have the flexibility to adapt to local community needs. He did accept a government grant in 1976 to form an ‘association’ or network of the new food bank organizations. This network of food banks would be able to share best practices, and to operate according to a standard set of guidelines designed to make them each more efficient. Also, the guidelines helped protect the corporate food donors and their tax deductions. Such standards went a long way toward creating a comfort level for the companies who had extra food to give.

Over a few decades, Van Hengle’s idea continued to spread across the nation, and the “Second Harvest” national network of food banks (now called Feeding America) grew in  membership. Major national food manufacturers were attracted to the efficiency, and began to join food distributors, wholesalers, retailers, growers, and other donors all over the country. From humble beginnings in Phoenix, the concept of food banking had grown exponentially from the local collection and distribution of a few million pounds of food per year … to tens of millions of pounds … to  hundreds of millions of pounds … and ultimately to more than 3 Billion pounds of food provided last year alone in America.

Can I get an Amen? Today the Feeding America network includes 205 independent community food bank organizations that provide food to every county of every state in America.  More than 50,000 local nonprofit feeding programs now draw food resources from these food banks, and tens of millions of individuals and families in need are helped every year as a result.

John Van Hengle died in 2005 at the age of 83.  A humble man with one very big idea and a heart to match. I have always considered it unfortunate that Van Hengle is not more well-known for his place in history, but in my opinion his contribution to humanity places him alongside much more recognizable American heroes and heroines such as Clara Barton, Jane Addams, Cesar Chavez and Sargent Shriver.

He was a man whose work made it possible for millions of people in need of food to get help that would not otherwise have been available to them. As an employee of Second Harvest Food Bank of Central Florida, I am deeply privileged every day to be able to help continue the legacy of John Van Hengle in my own community. I truly appreciate that you seem to find this incredible mission interesting as well.  (Why else would you have read this story all the way to the end?:-). Thanks so much for your steadfast support.

Greg Higgerson
CFRE Vice-President, Development

Eatonville Boys & Girls Club’s Kids Cafe welcomed over 120 youngsters with a hot afterschool meal on its opening day. The club sits in the heart of historic Eatonville; the nation’s oldest established African-American township. It is a stone’s throw from Hungerford Elementary and draws more than 200 students from nearby elementary, middle, and high schools.

Joyce Davis, who prepared  the meals, tell us that before Kids Cafe, children would receive small snacks consisting of bagels or cheese perhaps two or three times weekly, without regularity.

Second Harvest Food Bank, with the support of the Winter Park Health Foundation, has made it possible for these children to rely on a wholesome meal each and every day while school is in session. During the summer, Second Harvest will sponsor the club so that it may participate in the Summer Food Service Program which helps bridge the nutritional gap when children lack access to school cafeterias.

The club can now access a wide variety of food product from our main warehouse. Nutritional education will also be provided starting in early February.  Since children’s diets are generally a function of what happens at home, our hope is that the children will influence their parents by recounting what they learn at the club.  Menu tips, dietary guidelines and support will also be provided to the club’s cook.

We are extremely pleased with the first day’s turnout and expect a significant increase by week’s end.

Thanks to the Winter Park Health Foundation, Boys & Girls Clubs of Central Florida, Deb Watson, Austin Long, Rod Bargaineer, and Joyce Davis for their enthusiasm and support as we worked closely to make this happen!

View a map of our 13 Kids Cafes in 3 counties: Second Harvest Food Bank Kids Cafes >>

Photos from opening day:

Santos Maldonado
Childhood Hunger Manager

One of the most often-heard sentiments expressed at Second Harvest Food Bank of Central Florida these days is that ‘We’ve run out of space, but we haven’t run out of need.”

As the number of our neighbors who need help with food continues to remain at historic levels, it is essential that our community continue working to close the gap between the amount of food needed, and the amount available. The good news is that there is no shortage of ‘extra’ food resources in our society. That’s not the problem. The main challenges faced in our work today lie in creating adequate infrastructure to take more full advantage of the bountiful food that exists in Florida, and throughout our country.

We’re extremely proud of the growth and community impact that our current facility has made possible over the past sixteen years, but very mindful of the limitations of capacity that now exist. Sadly, nearly four million pounds of wholesome, nutritious food products are having to be turned away each year due to lack of adequate facilities.   

The vision of the “Building Solutions to Hunger” capital campaign involves elevating the future of hunger relief in Central Florida to a whole new level. Just as the additional capacity sixteen years ago allowed our organization to move from distributing six million pounds per year to today’s rate of 33 million pounds per year, the new 100,000 square foot facility  will allow for a similar quantum leap forward in service delivery to the community.

The Morgan & Morgan P.A. Hunger Relief Center at Second Harvest Food Bank is expected to return more than $1.4 Billion in food value for struggling individuals and families over the next two decades. The new facility will be located at the corner of Mercy Drive and Old Winter Garden Road in Orlando.

The $15 million campaign to create the new facility started in the closing months of 2010, and to date has garnered commitments for 67% of the needed funds to make this new vision of hunger relief a reality.  Because Second Harvest Food Bank is committed to the idea of not carrying any long-term debt or mortgage, however, we have committed ourselves to raising at least 80% of the needed funds before we will break ground on the project.

Clearly, we need more funds (and quickly) in order to begin construction. It is hoped that an additional $2 million in support can be received in the next 90 days in order to reach the important milestone of 80% funding. Our work must begin on schedule and without delay in order to maintain the momentum we need to get the project completed. Once finished in late 2012, additional food resources will begin flowing immediately to our 500 partner agencies in six counties. More children, seniors, homeless, and working poor families than ever before will receive the resources they need to live and to thrive.

Our deepest gratitude goes out to the visionary contributors who have lent their passion and support to this important project so far: Morgan & Morgan, P.A., Darden Restaurants, Walt Disney World, Dr. Phillips Charities, Baker Barrios Architects, CNL, the Morgridge Family Foundation, BHM Architects, JP Morgan Chase Bank, Bank of America, the Second Harvest Food Bank board of directors, Publix Supermarkets, Edyth Bush Charitable Foundation, the Golf Channel, Brasfield & Gorrie, Florida Hospital/Adventist Health Systems, and many others.

Your help is needed today. For more information on the Building Solutions to Hunger project and to learn how you can get involved and make a lasting difference, please visit http://www.ShowMercyNow.org. Significant naming/dedication opportunities remain available at this time, and gifts of any amount toward the vision of future hunger relief in Central Florida are greatly appreciated.

Thank you!

Greg Higgerson, CFRE
Vice-President, Development

What could be better than an event encompassing wine, women, and shoes? Nothing in our eyes! Coming up on April 28, 2012 we will be holding our Second Annual Wine Women & Shoes Fundraising event at Rosen Shingle Creek.

For those of you who weren’t able to attend last year it’s an afternoon filled with fabulous fashion, delectable hors d’oeuvres, and of course sensational wine. The afternoon begins with shopping at designers and boutiques around the room as wine is poured and hors d’ oeuvres are tasted. “Shoe guys” float around the room and showcase shoes and other accessories on shiny silver platters.

After shopping women can peruse the silent auction and even get their make-up touched up! The grand finale of the day is the live auction offering once in a lifetime vacations and the fashion show highlighting this season’s latest trends.

After last year’s successful event our committee was extremely excited for the first meeting this year. With several returning members and some new faces the event is off to a great start!

The biggest news for this year: the fashion show is being sponsored and executed by the fashion mogul….Saks Fifth Avenue! We couldn’t be more excited to have them play such a huge role in Wine Women & Shoes this year.

Interested in attending the event or becoming a sponsor?

Please visit our webpage www.winewomenandshoes.com/orlando2012 for more details.

Jennifer Gibson
Events Specialist

One of the duties of Second Harvest’s Agency Relations Department is to not only monitor but make sure our partner agencies are receiving everything they need from us.  Our Agency Relations team thought it would be a good idea to volunteer with our agencies to get a different perspective of how the agencies serve their clients in need.

The first Agency Relations Coordinator to volunteer and write about this experience is Paula Assal.

Read about her experience below:

On Wednesday, January 4, 2012, I volunteered during the distribution at Apostolic Church of Jesus/West Orange. One of agency relations goals is to provide better customer service and to nurture the agency partnership with Second Harvest Food Bank.  Our hope is that by volunteering at the agencies I will not only have a better understanding of the agency needs but we can assist the agencies in a capacity that staff members haven’t experienced yet. It is as much of a learning experience for me as it is for the agency.

My time at Apostolic was spent talking to Stephanie, the pantry coordinator, assisting clients with the intake process, and restocking shelves. The intake process is not an easy job as many clients are reluctant to give their name and address for the paperwork needed. Each client that came was so happy to be blessed with what Apostolic could offer them by means of food and clothing. Some of the clients had difficulty filling out the form but each had a smile on their face as they left with their food. Patience and understanding is a big part of helping clients complete the forms.

It felt so good seeing each client come in with anticipation on their face and relief when they left knowing that if nothing else their families were going to eat that night. Afterwards, I helped restock shelves and date food product, no easy task as food is very heavy and keeping in mind rotating the food. When it was all over we had served 29 families in two hours. What a blessing to the community!

I look forward to the upcoming months to volunteer at different pantries and have similar but different experiences. I am so excited to be a part of the pantry process.

Paula Assal
Agency Relations Coordinator

One of the coolest things about my job is getting to meet all the different people that volunteer with us. We have quite a range of volunteer opportunities at Second Harvest. Our board members, committee members and event helpers are all volunteers. So besides important tasks like strategy, planning, and running the food bank’s mission, our volunteers spend lots of time sorting food at our Food Rescue Center.

On average, we can have close to 50 volunteers on a daily basis. This week alone, we have volunteers  from Universal Orlando, Marriott, Panera Bread, Nike Outlet, UCF, Walt Disney World and Dean, Ringers, Morton and Lawton helping out at our Food Rescue Center.

All of these volunteers come in to help us sort and pack up donations. They help us organize, check expiration dates and basically make sure that what is going out to our partner agencies is safe and of quality. I can’t imagine what we would do if we didn’t have these volunteers.

Last year alone, we had over 10,000 volunteers contribute more than 35,000 volunteer hours at the Food Bank. The estimated value of a volunteer’s time is $21.36. That means our volunteers helped us save more than $700,000.

This allows us to better serve our community and work towards our mission to alleviate hunger!  Huge thanks to all of our volunteers!!

Mindy Ortiz
Volunteer Services & Food Drive Manager