A community food bank can either be sponsored by a town or cities government or a community group such as a church or any local organization that has the town's people's welfare as the main focus of their organization.

Anyone can start a community food bank all you need is food and a place to hand it out at. Most community buildings; churches, libraries, schools and places that have rooms that events are held in will allow you to use the room for free for this purpose.

More families than we would like to even know about have trouble making their grocery dollars stretch enough to provide healthy meals while many families also face the problem of not even having the groceries dollars to stretch.

A food bank is a place where families and individuals can go and get non-perishable food some places do have milk, meat and other perishable items but the majority of food banks focus on food items that have a long expiration date on them.

They have volunteers who hand out bags or boxes of food, mainly ones that a meal can be made out of such as; macaroni, spaghetti sauce, soups, macaroni and cheese, hamburger or tuna helper box meals things of that nature. As well as bread, pancake mix, peanut butter, cereal, tuna fish, canned hams and sometimes they will hand out cake mixes and treats that you can bake yourself.

One community bank that I volunteered at when I was younger gave out a voucher to a local grocery store that had ten items listed on it; gallon of milk, dozen eggs, two packages of hot dogs, two packages of hamburger, one meat of your choice (under $3.00), one package of sliced cheese, a pound of deli meat (under $4.00) and a half gallon of juicy juice or orange juice.

The food bank had an agreement with the grocery store that allowed them to pay for only half of the total bill for each voucher. Of course the people had to get what was on the list and couldn't replace items with other items. The food bank also gave the person(s) a few bags of the other items as well as the voucher.

Community food banks all have a different schedule some are open daily, weekly or monthly. They try to set them up in a convent location for those who don't drive, can get to them or they move to a different location on another day.

If you're in need of a food bank call your local social services office and ask if they know where any are or look for signs in public places like the library. Also WIC (Women Children Infants) is another good place to call and ask about them.

Everyone deserves to eat so next time a boy or girl scout knocks on your door looking for canned food donations maybe you should check your cupboards or dig a little deeper coming up with a few cans instead of just one.

Learn more about this author, Tammy L Mahan.
Click here to send author comments or questions.

---

Add your voice

Know something about What are community food banks??
We want to hear your view. Write now!