St Mary's Food Bank Alliance

St. Mary's Food Bank distributes emergency Food boxes (efbs), at no cost, to individuals and families in need. The program is designed to help people who are dealing with a crisis (fire, flood, job layoff, etc. ); are struggling to make ends meet due to inflation and high costs of gas, Food, and housing; or are experiencing any other difficult situation and need Food assistance. A majority of those receiving efbs are low-income individuals and families, including those who are elderly and homeless, because they do not have financial savings to help them while they recover. More than 100 partner agencies receive the efbs and distribute them to people in need within their communities. Each efb provides a three-day supply of nutritious Food, which provides a helping hand while people recover and no longer need Food assistance. St. Mary's distributed 748,629 efbs during the year and an additional 32,810 tribal Food boxes.community distributions: St. Mary's provides perishable and non-perishable Food, free of charge, to 800+ local agencies that, in turn, provide Food to their clients (individuals and families in need throughout Arizona). Nearly 122 million pounds of Food were distributed during the year, including 50 million pounds of fresh produce and more than 20,000 holiday turkeys and family meals.mobile pantries: not everyone can come to a St. Mary's Food Bank location for emergency boxes, so the agency expanded its efforts to bring the Food Bank to them. Drive past a certain primary school in phoenix one wednesday each month, and you will see a St. Mary's Food Bank truck, along with pallets of fruits, vegetables, and bread with dozens of neighborhood families awaiting this much-needed, nutritious Food. This scene is playing out in countless communities throughout Arizona as the St. Mary's mobile pantry program, which continues to grow in both rural and urban locations, brings Food directly to neighborhoods in the greatest need. St. Mary's provided more than 8.6 million pounds of Food through this program.source distribution: source distribution is a volume-buying service offered by St. Mary's Food Bank to its partner agency organizations. By purchasing in truckload quantities, St. Mary's can procure popular Food items, which are not normally available as donations, at wholesale prices and pass the savings on to its agencies.

Child nutrition: because no child deserves to go to bed hungry, the federal kids cafe program aims to alleviate childhood hunger in Arizona by providing nutritious meals to children at risk of hunger. St. Mary's distributed 850,000 meals for food-insecure youth at 230 kids cafe after-school and summer meal sites that are safe, accessible, and nurturing environments. Kids cafe sites often are part of an after-school program that includes tutoring, homework study groups and athletic activities. Kids cafe partners include churches, schools, community centers and city parks & recreation departments. The Food component ensures that the children receive a nutritious late afternoon meal, which especially benefits those who might not have an evening meal at home.backpack program: the backpack program provides "chronically hungry" Arizona children and their families with non-perishable Food, primarily meals that kids can take home and eat on weekends when not in school. St. Mary's distributed 111,764 backpacks during the fiscal year.

Senior nutrition: the commodity supplemental Food program (csfp) is a federally funded program that works to improve the health of low-income people at least 60 years of age by supplementing their diets with nutritious usda commodity foods. St. Mary's distributed 186,413 of these boxes during the fiscal year.

Skills center: for 20 years, St. Mary's has conducted a successful workforce development program called community kitchen that prepares people who are in poverty and have barriers to employment for restaurant careers. However, pandemic-related social distancing and other issues decreased the number of restaurant-related jobs available in the valley. As a result, we began looking at other industries in need of workers that we can train. St. Mary's has two large warehouses and dozens of workers to receive, store and prepare millions of tons of Food for distribution each year. St. Mary's also has decades of experience training people for warehouse jobs, which is why it launched its lift program to give primarily homeless and recently incarcerated people who wish to improve their lives the opportunity to secure a warehouse job. Like community kitchen, those in the training program gain skills through firsthand training and classroom studies to qualify for and secure jobs offering livable wages, benefits, and opportunities for advancement. During the past decade, community kitchen has provided thousands of meals for children and others in need, while transforming the lives of many people who completed the training and became employed through the program. In addition to training, each student receives job-placement assistance and support following graduation. Lift and community kitchen fall under the St. Mary's Food Bank skills center. These programs graduated 139 students during the year.