A New Approach to the Old Food Bank Model

Visiting the local food bank has always been viewed as somewhat of an impersonal experience chalk full of long lines, barren walls and sunken faces.  You show up, wait your turn and then, if you're lucky, receive a few grocery bags full of post-expiration goods.

It is this routine that sometimes causes people to avoid taking advantage of a food bank's services, even if they desperately need them.

Sasha Abramky, in his book Breadline USA (which I've referenced before), visits a food pantry in Sacramento, California and offers this reflection:

I stopped at the table with whittled-down pencils and short charity request forms to fill in.  Once inside, I made a U-turn, going back down the interior side of the brick wall that I had just advanced along from the outside.  To my left was a painted wall with a sheet of metal, etched with years of graffiti; to my right, dull white-and-blue painted bricks...This wasn't a supermarket without cash registers, a consumer place of choice, of lifestyles realized.  It was, I felt, rather a place for the spreading of tuberculosis or the flu, as well as every other germ, real and imagined; it was truly a last-stop hotel, a room where dignity came to die.

It was probably the desire to move away from such an institutional setting that pushed the University District Food Bank (UDFB) in Seattle to develop a new way for clients to get their hands on much-needed food.

In 2007, they launched a new super-market style food bank that gave clients the ability to "shop" for food by strolling through aisles of canned goods, frozen items and even fresh produce.  For this work, UDFB won a 2008 Excellence in Service award from the non-profit group Food Lifeline.  Here's a little description of their project from the award announcement (pdf):

All our non-perishable foods are organized on shelves by the different nutritional categories of the USDA Food Pyramid and these shelves are labeled/color-coded to correspond with the shopping budgets that we provide our customers at check-in.  Each household that comes to our food bank receives a shopping "budget" that is based on their family size and their family's nutritional needs for three days.  With budget in hand, our customers grab a shopping cart and go shopping to pick out the specific items that they want or need.

(I really encourage people to read through the link immediately above.  It gives specific advice and directions on how to replicate this project anywhere in the country.)

I would just really like to applaud UDFB for their efforts to make visiting the food bank a more pleasurable, and even an empowering, experience.  Simply giving food bank clients a choice in what food they receive makes these families feel like they matter, like someone cares about them.  And in the end, that's really what everyone in poverty advocacy work strives for.

Another Seattle-area non-profit group, Hopelink, opened a new grocery store style food bank modeled on UDFB's this week.

I say, keep 'em coming.

(Photo credit: Jeff Keen on Flickr)