A Farm Bill for Our Future
January is nearly over, but 2018 has only just begun, and it’s shaping up to be a big year for anti-hunger advocates. September 30, 2018 marks the expiration of the Agricultural Act of 2014, commonly known as the Farm Bill. That means that the USDA and Congress are busy at work putting together a brand-new Farm Bill to reauthorize and [...]
Pantry Spotlight: Affton Christian Food Pantry
The Affton Christian Food Pantry (ACFP) values the connections they make with their community. “Relationships with people in need are sometimes as important as, if not more than, the food we can give them,” says Dana George, Pantry Manager at ACFP. Serving 100 families every week in the Affton community is no small task, but the staff takes time to [...]
Frank’s Farewell Letter
Our President and CEO, Frank Finnegan, has written many letters for our newsletter. His most recent letter was written for our December newsletter, and he shared a pretty big announcement for the Foodbank community. In the spring of 1980 I was interviewing for a position with a social service agency in Phoenix, Arizona, trying to convince the woman on the [...]
Feeding Hope in Williamson County
Last month, one of our Agency Relations Coordinators, Melanie Hager, was able to go above and beyond for a woman in need in Williamson County, Illinois. Below she shares her story. I was at Williamson County Programs on Aging conducting a CSFP training/meeting with our contact, MaryJane Fuller. She had just met with a woman and was very shook up [...]
Volunteer Spotlight: Joe Venable
Joe Venable has been coming to volunteer at the St. Louis Area Foodbank for 5 years. He brings a group of 12 -15 volunteers from Scott Air Force Base with him, and they are very appreciated in our Volunteer Center. “Whenever we see that Joe’s group is on the schedule, we know we’ve got to have a lot of work [...]
Decatur’s Farm Bill Listening Session
This year the House Agriculture Committee has hosted Listening Sessions all across the country to hear from key stakeholders as they prepare to draft and pass a new Farm Bill in 2018. The Farm Bill is a massive piece of legislation that establishes programs and appropriates funding for everything from agricultural research to crop insurance to federal nutrition programs like [...]
Dustin’s Story
As a lifelong sports fan, Dustin knows hard work and practice make perfect. That’s why he maintains a blog where he can sharpen his writing skills and work towards his dream job in sports broadcasting. A former football player and now a coach to his community’s high school football team, Dustin has plenty to write about. And when he isn’t [...]
Political, not Partisan: Signing on with other Nonprofits to Stay Accountable
We’ve signed another letter to lawmakers, but not one about safety-net programs. Let’s talk about why. Political action – what we describe at the St. Louis Area Foodbank as “advocacy” – is a critical part of what we do. We work hard to address hungry people’s immediate needs and to work towards eliminating hunger in our community, and we cannot [...]
National School Breakfast Week
This week is National School Breakfast Week, spotlighting the benefits of school breakfast for kids across the country. The School Breakfast Program (SBP) is designed to give students affordable access to food at the start of each school day, which promotes better learning outcomes as well as happier, healthier kids. Fortunately, like school lunches, school breakfast is heavily subsidized or [...]
Perryville Pillow Talk
Our neighbors in Perryville have had some rough nights of sleep, so we’re sending pillows! Early this week, we were happy to receive pallets of pillows that were donated because they were mismarked and couldn’t be sold in retail stores. We started distributing the pillows to transitional housing programs, but when we heard about the tornado emergency in Perryville, MO, [...]