North Texas Food Bank

In fy23, North Texas Food Bank (ntfb) distributed roughly 144 million meals through a diverse network of about 500 feeding partners that provide Food assistance and other wraparound services, helping neighbors in need find Food assistance programs and make a lasting change to address the underlying barriers to Food security. Generous contributions of Food products, funds and volunteer service support multiple programs of the North Texas Food Bank. These programs benefit approximately 1,000 feeding and education locations in 13 North Texas counties, including Food pantries, soup kitchens, shelters, after school programs, senior citizen centers, and other social service centers. These feeding partners receive Food from the Food Bank and distribute it to North texans in need through their pantry and on-site meal programs.

The school pantry program provides eligible students and their families access to non-perishable items, as well as fresh produce, through participating schools. Distributions occur once a month, typically after school. Students who visit the school pantry leave with 20-25 pounds of shelf-stable Food items and 15 pounds of produce. School pantry programs operate in schools with at least 90% of students qualifying for free/reduced meals, within close-knit neighborhoods. The program has also been expanded to serve college campuses. In the 2022-2023 school year, ntfb provided nearly 2.0 million meals through this program.

The first commodity supplemental Food program (known locally as people and nutrition, or pan) provides monthly Food packages to low-income senior citizens who meet certain requirements. In 2023, roughly 8,200 participants received monthly an estimated 32 pounds of usda commodities at 65 pan distribution sites in dallas, collin, delta, denton, ellis, fannin, grayson, hopkins, hunt, kaufman, lamar and navarro counties. Pan is a partnership of the u.s. department of agriculture, Texas department of agriculture and ntfb. In fy23, ntfb provided access to 2.5 million meals through the csfp program.

The Food 4 kids program feeds students facing hunger on the weekends when school feeding programs are closed and students are the most vulnerable. Food 4 kids provides children with backpacks of nutritious Food every friday throughout the school year. Each backpack contains kid-friendly snacks carefully selected by our nutrition services manager to provide two-thirds of a child's weekend nutritional needs. In the 2022-2023 school year, Food 4 kids operated in roughly 300 schools and provided 9,805 children with 234,000 backpacks, the equivalent of roughly 0.9 million meals. After participating in Food for kids, children improved significantly on these measures: exhibited fewer behaviors associated with Food insecurity, talked less frequently about issues related to Food insecurity, were judged to be more emotionally healthy, and performed better academically.

The supplemental nutrition assistance program (snap) addressees the nutritional needs of low-income families and is one of the nation's most important defenses against hunger. Ntfb helps to increase enrollment through application assistance and providing snap information in 13 North Texas counties to overcome barriers to participation. In fy23, ntfp provided access to 46 million meals through the snap program