For every unrestricted $1 donated, the Food Bank can distribute 4 meals to the hungry in our community.
The Food Bank distributes food through 360 Partner Agencies that provide food through 440 different feeding programs. These partners are located in the following counties of eastern Oklahoma: Adair, Cherokee, Choctaw, Craig, Creek, Delaware, Haskell, Latimer, Le Flore, Mayes, McCurtain, McIntosh, Muskogee, Nowata, Okmulgee, Osage, Ottawa, Pittsburg, Pushmataha, Rogers, Sequoyah, Tulsa, Wagoner and Washington. These programs include on-site feeding programs, emergency shelters, emergency food pantries, children and senior feeding programs, veterans’ outreach initiatives, and other low income programs that have a meal component. All of these programs provide food free of charge to people who struggle with hunger in the community.
The Food Bank’s work also includes direct feeding programs such as Cooking Matters, Food for Kids, Senior Servings, Clinic Pantry, Mobile Pantry, Culinary Center and College Campus Pantry. Collectively the Food Bank coordinates more than 275 direct feeding sites.
- Cooking Matters educates and empowers low-income families with skills, knowledge and confidence to make healthy, affordable meals.
- Food for Kids ensures food insecure children have a resource for nutritious meals throughout the year through the Backpack Program, Kids Cafe, School Pantries, Free Family Farmers’ Markets and School Break Feeding.
- Senior Feeding provides healthy, nutritious food assistance to senior citizens who struggle with hunger.
- Clinic Pantry provides fresh produce to low-income patients at their regular doctor visits as a way to treat chronic illness.
- Mobile Pantry meets the needs of underserved rural areas by creating a farmers’ market style of distribution in areas where there is little to no food assistance, as well as at rural Disabled American Veterans locations.
- Culinary Center prepares nutritious meals from perishable food that would otherwise be discarded. These meals are distributed through our partner agencies and through the Mobile Eatery. The Mobile Eatery food trucks provide healthy meals in low-income communities focusing on extended school breaks for children and providing meals during food pantry distributions as well as veterans outreach centers. The Culinary Center also administrates the Culinary Trade Program, which offers a fresh start to low-income, at-risk individuals looking to gain culinary training for future employment. While students in the program aim to develop career skills, they are also helping prepare and distribute meals for the hungry- T-Town Tacos.
- College Campus Pantry provides meal components- fruits, vegetables, protein and grain items- that can be turned into quality meals for the low-income, struggling college students and their families.
We could not operate without the generous help of foundations like yours. It is operations funding that staffs our programming, fills the trucks with fuel to distribute food, helps secure the healthy food provided daily, keeps our refrigeration units running and the lights on. With a general operations gift, you can proudly know you’re helping all demographics of those in need. Your gift can stretch to all programs, serving the school pantry programs, soup kitchens, and beyond. Hunger is an insidious obstacle that can derail plans for work, education, health improvement and more. Through assisting with this most basic of needs, together we can allow people to focus their efforts on improving circumstances for themselves and their families.
