Second Harvest Food Bank of Central Florida

General Food distribution: collection, warehousing, and distribution of product from local and national Food industry donors, community Food drives, and purchases to non-profit agencies with feeding and/or Food distribution programs. The Food is provided to partner agencies at a greatly reduced cost. The partner agencies provide the Food to people in need at no cost. 54,088,411 pounds of Food were distributed which provided approximately 45,073,676 meals.

Direct home delivery: bring hope home (bhh) is a community health initiative program that delivers healthy grocery boxes to neighbors and patients on a biweekly basis who have a health-related need or who cannot access Food in the traditional way due to transportation barriers. Bhh currently has two community health initiative arms: community and healthcare. Bhh serves seniors (60+) who screen positive for Food insecurity and lack reliable transportation under the community arm, while bhh addresses maternal health and kidney health by serving patients through the healthcare arm. In fiscal year 2023, 82% of neighbors and patients surveyed report that at least 50% of their diet is supplemented by bhh, and 61,268 deliveries were made to 2,648 households which equates to 1,016,244.17 meals delivered. Medically tailored meals (mtm) is another community health initiative program that focuses on providing weekly medically tailored meals to 20 food-insecure patients diagnosed with chronic kidney disease. Since april 2023, the pilot program started in orange county and has served 28 patients, delivered 7,056 meals and 96% of patients reported no hospitalizations. The medically tailored meal program also supported a health and hunger pilot by providing and delivering 2,597 meals to patients with hypertension.

Community kitchen: the Second Harvest community kitchen provides ecomonic opportunity pathways to our neighbors in the form of quality jobs. Community kitchen's 16-week culinary training program focuses on Food service-based technical, life, and employability skills training for adults. In an effort to provide opportunities for students, the culinary team assist students with job placement that pay a standard living wage or above living wage, have healthcare benefits, and upward mobility. In hopes of closing workforce equity gaps by focusing on job quality, we provide students with the resources and knowledge needed to thrive in a changing economy.the program graduates approximately 31 Central Florida adults annually. The community kitchen also provides full-service catering to generate revenue that supports the culinary program, allowing students to attend classes at no cost to them. Additionally, the community kitchen prepared and delivered over 3.530 million meals to the Central Florida community as follows: 2,199,270 meals to non-program community partners serving children. 26,059 meals to seniors and households. 749,719 meals to early childhood learning centers. 178,542 meals to children's summer program sites. 373,681 meals to afterschool program centers.it also manages a retail Food product line which offers healthy soup, honey, cookies and lunches that are sold online and at boutique shops and other retail outlets. Proceeds help support the culinary program.

Benefits connection is a snap outreach program, designed to educate and assist potentially eligible low-income households enroll in the program. Our specialists provide service at partner agencies, community centers, libraries and community events to assist potential applicants. These neighbors might lack access to a computer, need support navigating an online application, have transportation/mobility challenges, be misinformed on eligibility factors, and those with literacy or language barriers. Last fiscal year, the team processed 4,760 applications in (orange, brevard, osceola, seminole,volusia, and lake) counties resulting in an estimated $7.5 million in annualized snap benefits for the community, which is over 2 million snap meals.kids cafe: a healthy meal service program that provides Food exclusively to needy children during after school hours monday through friday. 28 kids cafes sites in 5 counties served 211,291 meals in addition to providing a safe and accessible site for children with nutrition education and activities. Fresh and nutritious meals from our community kitchen are prepared and delivered daily during the county academic year. Donated Food also helps support kids cafes at 2 locations that prepare their own meals.bites camera action: this specialty program delivers Food boxes and fresh produce to 90+ vulnerable community sites reaching low-income families, veterans, seniors and adults. Collectively, 332,816 pounds of Food were distributed which provided 277,346 meals.school partnerships program: promotes a student-centered, stigma-reducing approach to increasing Food access among students experiencing hunger. In collaboration with community organizations and school leadership, our model emphasizes student engagement in school-based market operations. Since its inception in 2017, the Second Harvest school partnerships program has served over 1.7 million meals tostudents and their families across 65 partner sites in six counties throughout Central Florida through three flagship program models (kids packs, school markets, and fresh markets).summer Food service program: provides healthy breakfasts and lunches to children in low-income areas during summer recess when school cafterias are closed. Last year 102,323 meals were distributed through this program at 78 sites in 5 counties. Retail rescue: a Food rescue program where our team picks up nutritious perishable and non-perishable Food products in refrigerated vehicles monday-friday from over 460 different retail store locations throughout Central Florida. The Food is then brought back to our facilities and inspected for quality and safety. Once the products are approved by on-site training professionals at the Food Bank, it is distributed either at no-cost, or at a very minimal cost to more than 600 Second Harvest Food Bank member agencies who in-turn distribute to clients. The grocery alliance program distributed 31,672,539 pounds of Food that provided approximately 26,393,783 meals.snap-ed:second Harvest has contracted to provide snap education services to snap eligible participants. The snap-ed services are for the nutrition education and obesity prevention grant program using a combination of approaches. These approaches include educational strategies and environment supports, designed to facilitate voluntary adoption of Food and physical activity choices and other nutrition-related behaviors conducive to the health and well being of snap participants, low income individuals eligible to participate in snap, and individuals residing in communities with a significant low-income population. In fy23-24, we had 7 nutrition educators working in all 7 of our service area counties providing education in community organizations, educational settings, and healthcare locations. Over 2,100 nutrition workshops and over 80 cooking demonstrations were held. Additionally, we're implementing policy, systems, and environmental changes via 3 health promotion coordinators, and have educated 4 cohorts of healthcare provides on social determinants of health and have 12 pantries certified as part of our healthy pantry network. Within the foodbank, roughly sixty percent of the Food within the warehouse has been evaluated for nutritional value and ranked per the her nutrition guidelines, helping partner agencies select the most nutritious foods for the pantry sites. Health & hunger: Second Harvest is taking a collaborative approach with other community partners to influence the health of the communities we serve. We are utilizing multiple pathways to help Food insecure people prevent and manage diet-related chronic disease utilizing our network of pantries and home delivered grocery boxes. To complete this work, Second Harvest convenes the health & hunger task force, a coalition of more than 40 local nonprofit healthcare providers, nutrition and health-focused organizations to learn how the Food Bank can come alongside community healthcare organizations to measurably improve the health of vulnerable populations by using Food as medicine.one of the primary goals of the health and hunger task force is to increase the screen and intervene capacity of all health care settings. We support the development of Food pantries in hospitals and other healthcare facilities, as well as distribution of healthy Food boxes for patients referred from hospitals and clinics that participate in "Food is medicine" pilot programs with shfb. Through capacity-building efforts, partner pantries can take an active role in the health of their clients by providing healthier foods and nutrition education. Our Food is medicine pilots utilize both hospital/clinic pantries as healthy Food access points as well as home delivery through shfb's bring hope home program. Nutrition education is also a key component of our health and hunger work and has taken many forms that include but are not limited to cooking demos, direct education lessons, meal preparation videos, community outreach, paper resources, recipe books, utilizing virtual platforms to reach the community as allowed the Food Bank to reach more pantries and clients than ever before.