Chester County Food Bank

Chester County Food Bank is the central hunger-relief organization in Chester County Pennsylvania. We mobilize our community to ensure access to healthy Food. At our core, we procure, distribute, grow, and collect Food for our neighbors experiencing Food insecurity in Chester County. In fiscal year 2023 we distributed 3.67 million pounds of Food through 160 community partners, equating to more than 3.2 million meals. We accomplish this through a variety of mission critical programs in a few strategic areas; Food distribution, education & wellness, agriculture, and workforce development. We procure Food through a variety of sources, these include donations of product, government assisted commodities (tefap, pass, sfpp) and purchased Food through dollars contributed privately. (continued on schedule o) this allows us to distribute Food that is provided at no cost to pantry participants or the community partners operating the Food cupboards, meal sites, shelters and schools. As the central hunger-relief organization, we are able to ensure a more equitable distribution of resources throughout the County, regardless of an individual community's support of their local Food providing agency. Food access and community education (face) is an area of our work that goes beyond simply providing emergency supplies of Food. Through our face initiatives, we collaborate with other community organizations to address the root causes of hunger through programs like eatfresh, best choices, raised bed gardens and seed to supper. Additionally, we serve communities with low-food access through our fresh2you mobile market; a roving farmers' market focused on fresh, local produce. Tasteit! Food demonstrations highlight seasonal produce at the market and teach customers new kitchen skills. At fresh2you, customers are welcome to use a variety of payment methods, including snap benefits and farmers' market nutrition program vouchers offered to wic participants and qualifying seniors. All purchases made with nutrition programs are matched with ccfb funded veggiebucks to stretch shoppers' dollars even further. Our agriculture program is an homage to Chester County's deep agricultural heritage. With the generous support of our County commissioners, we are able to grow thousands of pounds of produce for our programs at historic springton manor farm. In addition to engaging our community volunteers in the planting, growing and harvesting of produce at springton manor, we raise seedlings to distribute amongst our raised bed garden participants. We also maintain an award-winning raised bed demo garden on location and house a large high tunnel to extend our growing season. The agriculture program is run by three on-staff growers who oversee operations at springton manor and other locations in the County. Direct distribution programs fill gaps of need for the most vulnerable in our community. For low-income children in participating schools, our backpack program provides a supply of nutritious Food on friday afternoons to send children home with over the weekend. During summer months the summer student Food box program and pre-made sunshine meals provide nutritious, easy-to-preparfood to students and their families. The senior box program is ccfb's rendition of the federal commodity supplemental Food program (csfp). Now serving more than 750 seniors per month, or 9000 annually. Ccfb can tailor boxes to meet the specific dietary needs of our community and leverage it as a point of contact with our senior community. From time to time, Food insecure individuals present themselves to the Food Bank and we are able to provide them with emergency Food, a 3-day supply of Food, until they can connect to a regular distribution - this is the function of our emergency Food box program. Workforce development is the newest initiative of Chester County Food Bank. Recognizing unemployment and underemployment as one of the root causes of Food insecurity, our freshstart kitchen culinary team provides individuals experiencing barriers to employment with the knife skills, cooking, and life skills to enter a new career and achieve self-efficacy. The program prepares participants through a 10-week culinary arts training program that includes life skills and job readiness, internship placement and job search assistance.