The Foodbank Inc. is celebrating 50 years of hunger relief in the Miami Valley with a block party late June.
While an exact date for the block party has not been released, the nonprofit plans to offer live entertainment, family activities and refreshments for the community.
This celebration will provide food that their own customers would typically enjoy as well as products sourced from their own garden, said Amber Wright, marketing and advocacy manager for The Foodbank Inc.
“None of this is going to be coming out of donated product, all of this is going be purchased with money that we set aside for special events," she said.
Wright said their upcoming block party will be tied to the opening of their nearly 11,000-square-foot community building. It will house community health workers and a meeting space for their community partners.
"When we first came about in 1976, it wasn't even a full 10 years after the very first food bank started in Phoenix, Arizona. I think that one started in 1967."
"They're going to be able to help provide people with those wraparound services that we've identified are necessary," she said. "We can give them resources for their immediate need and connect them with a community health worker to go over their options for SNAP or WIC or whatever the nutrition programs might be able to help them."
The building was funded partially by federal dollars, designated by U.S. Rep. Mike Turner (R-Dayton). Those funds cover nearly half of the $5 million construction costs, and the Foodbank raised the rest.
From 16 to 122 partners
The Foodbank Inc. started off with just 16 community partners but now, that number has grown to 122 organizations across the Miami Valley.
Much like the number of community partners, organization has only grown over a half a century.
"When we first came about in 1976, it wasn't even a full 10 years after the very first food bank started in Phoenix, Arizona. I think that one started in 1967," said Wright.
The local resource hub evolved from offering select products like baby beds and cribs to food which Wright said requires more regulation and temp controlled storage.
"It's harder to work with food, and I think that that's something that's not always appreciated in our line of work," she said. "With food we have to have special storage and special training for people to be able to safely handle it."
Wright said the nonprofit started with a proposal from the Dayton Ombudsman Office, seeking to centralize resources to benefit nonprofits in its service territory.
"They wrote up a proposal for the Emergency Resource Bank, which is what we were originally called, and they even housed the one staff member that we had when we first emerged as an organization," she said. "However, they did not want there to be a conflict of interest since the Ombudsman does a lot of regulating and watchdogging for some of the community agencies. So they almost immediately housed us with the Red Cross. And that's where we really got established."
It wasn’t until 2004 that the organization took on their moniker, The Foodbank Inc., and moved to its current facility at 56 Armor Place.
Wright said their service reach only grew as they joined the national network America's Second Harvest, now known as Feeding America. From there, they were connected with even more community partners.
“That has opened up a lot of options for people to be able to go access food that they didn't have before," she said. "And it also shows how many more people are needing food assistance today than they were 50 years ago.”
In 1978,their network served almost 50,000 service requests. But in the last fiscal year, they had over 853,000 client visits, donating over 17 million pounds of food. That includes fresh produce.
And the organization continues to evolve to better serve the needs of those across the Miami Valley.
"Our partners used to pay 5 cents per pound of food to cover transportation costs during our early days. The price rose with the cost of living, reaching 16 cents per pound in 2020," said Wright. "However, that May, our food bank waived the fee completely, providing food to all of our nonprofit partners for free. That was a COVID response measure, but now that we have worked out a free model, we don't have any plans to go back."
