Arkansas Foodbank

Our food for families program focuses on connecting our partner agencies with local, state and national resources with food and funds to strengthen their programs, ultimately enabling them to better serve their community. To do this, we employ the following tactics: work to provide access to healthy and nutritious food to families; partner with nearly 387 agencies that include community pantries, soup kitchens and shelters across 33 counties; provide mini-grants to build agency capacity that can serve as food credits and/or purchase equipment; conduct Foodbank university training sessions to improve pantry services through an array of best practice topies; and design and implement new program initiatives to tackle barriers to food security.

Our food for kids program focuses on effective, cost-efficient and replicable hunger relief programs to target children. As we researched the answers to our questions, four strategies emerged that clearly met the criteria. Backpack program: in 1994, the Arkansas rice depot launched the backpack program, sending hungry children home with backpacks filled with food every weekend. In 2023 the backpack program, served approximately 2,500 kids in 68 schools. School pantries: school pantries are readily accessible sources of food assistance for low income children aged 0-18 and their families. School pantries operate much like other food pantries, with the exception that the pantry only serves school children and their families. Sites are either located on a school's campus of close by, have set distribution schedules, and offer ongoing food assistance services. After school snack & meals programs: after school snack & meals programs operate in local non-profit organizations.

Usda commodities: local, state and national governments recognize the importance of providing adequate resources for citizens. Government programs that help feed hungry people include: snap, wic, tefap and csfp commodities. Locally, city and county governments provide support to soup kitchens and pantries and partner with local organizations to connect hungry people with resources. Collaborations between the public, private and non-profit sectors are the most effective at addressing hunger. The emergency food assistance program (tefap) is an effective federal program that helps supplement the diets of low income americans, by providing them with emergency food and nutrition assistance via food banks. The program was designed to help reduce federal food inventories and storage costs while assisting low income persons. Tefap is the backbone of the charitable food system.

Increasing access to nutritious food for seniors is a top priority for the Arkansas Foodbank. The organization serves seniors through direct service, partner agencies and community partnerships. We have three primary strategies to serve seniors and serve seniors better. The first strategy is thorugh capacity building. We have awarded senior focused mini-grants to agency members. The second strategy is thorugh senior food boxes. For over eighteen years, Arkansas Foodbank has partnered with carelink to provide monthly senior supplemental food boxes to home-bound seniors who are meals on wheels clients. The third strategy is through senior snap application assistance. We target seniors for snap outreach and application assistance.