Feeding a need
Teens at Donora Youth Center’s summer camp open bags of goodies filled by the Greater Washington County Food Bank.
Volunteers pose with some of the 300 backpacks that were filled with personal care items by the Greater Washington County Food Bank for distribution to children involved with various summer programs.
The Greater Washington County Food Bank receives a great deal of support, but as the need to feed families with children year-round continues to climb, so, too, does the need for more donations.
“Sometimes it’s hard to wrap our minds around that. It’s hard to think people are actually hungry,” said Connie Burd, executive director of the food bank. “In some cases, kids don’t have food choices.”
In other cases, she said, children don’t have good, nutritional food choices, which can lead to obesity and other health issues.
“We try to stack up good quality foods for them,” Burd said.
The food bank has partnered with more than a dozen religious and school-based nonprofit sponsors to offer after-school nourishment in an attempt to eliminate childhood hunger. The food bank also supports summer feeding programs for children throughout Washington County.
Donations received from Dominion, Snee-Reinhardt, Salvitti family and Centimark Foundations, among others, have underwritten the cost of Donora Youth Center’s summer camp and three weekend food programs for students during the school year: Love First in the Ringgold School District, Harvest’s Bounty in Charleroi and California Good Eats. The food bank also provides year-round support to the LeMoyne Community Center in Washington.
According to the food bank, more than 30 percent of its recipients are children younger than 18. Several school districts in Washington County estimate that 50 percent or more of school-age children are eligible to receive free or reduced school lunches.
In the last fiscal year, the food bank distributed almost three million pounds of food to the needy in Washington County through a network of 48 distribution sites, and has partnered with United Way, Domestic Violence Services of Southwestern Pennsylvania, City Mission and the Salvation Army to provide wrap-around services to clients.
In addition, a grant enabled the food bank to provide 300 backpacks filled with about $27 worth of personal care items this year for distribution to children involved with various summer programs.
The backpack program is just the latest in the food bank’s expanding outreach to nourish the mind, body and soul since opening a new 26,500 square-foot facility last July in the former Country Fresh Market at 909 National Pike in Brownsville. The new facility replaced the food bank’s 9,500-square-foot warehouse in Eighty Four.
“We’ve had amazing growth,” Burd said. “Everyone is amazed. We’re creating a model where we can holistically help people out of their circumstances.”
Just three months after settling into its new headquarters, the food bank opened a Country Thrift Market, which offers new and gently used items. Donations are accepted and then sold to benefit the pantry.
In November, the food bank established the Healthy Habits Training Center, thanks, in part, to a $50,000 grant from the Walmart Foundation.
The training center provides free instruction on cooking, growing fruits and vegetables, tending a garden, canning and preserving and storing food to all Washington County residents, and works hand-in-hand with the food bank’s 22-acre farm, where 70 fruit trees were planted and 32 raised vegetable beds were built.
And during the 2017-18 school year, the food bank will partner with Trinity High School, where students will be growing vegetables in a Leafy Green Machine, a high-tech hydroponic farm built inside a shipping container. The container will enable students to grow greens vertically and hydroponically – without soil – and donate them to the food bank.
The farm-in-a-box is designed to give students an opportunity to gain experience in the science and engineering of hydroponic agriculture, as well as teach them about the business and responsibility of running a farm.
According to Freight Farms, the portable vegetable gardens use 90 percent less water than conventional soil-based farms.
One shipping container produces the equivalent of what is produced on an acre of land, and uses 10 gallons of water a day.
For example, one container can produce 1,200 to 1,500 heads of lettuce per week, 52 weeks per year – approximately 78,000 heads of fresh, pesticide-free lettuce per year.
“We’ll be able to supply a lot of organic, insect-free food,” said Burd, adding that the food bank hopes to obtain some grants so it can maintain 25 hydroponic growing pods on site.
“Trinity will be planting thousands of pounds of potatoes and hundreds of pounds of green beans, and will donate them back to nonprofits,” Burd said.” So everybody wins, and it’s fresh.”
Burd said Fort Cherry and McGuffey High schools also have expressed an interest in forming a partnership with the food bank.
“We want to expand as much as we can,” Burd said. “I love it, I love it, and I love it. I come to work and am exctied about what we get to do.”
To make a donation via credit card, contact Lee Ann King, bookkeeper, at 724-632-2190, or mail a tax-deductible donation to GWCFB, 909 National Pike West, Brownsville, PA 15417.