HARVEST AGAINST HUNGER
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Mission Statement
Harvest Against Hunger helps feed hungry people with surplus nutritious produce by: - Connecting connects farmers, truckers, volunteers and food banks, - Developing and sharing innovative hunger relief solutions, - Engaging the public in hunger relief.
About This Cause
We believe that providing healthy food to people in need builds healthier communities. Getting healthy food to hungry people can be complicated. Harvest Against Hunger plays the unique role of making connections that move surplus produce from farms to food banks. We are successful because we build relationships that create efficiencies for everyone involved. Farmers and produce packers reduce food loss and more healthy food makes it to people in need. Today, nearly 40% of the food grown in the US goes to waste. At the same time, millions of people - especially children and seniors - don't have access to the kind of nutritious fruits and vegetables they need to thrive. HAH is a lean organization that leverages our deep and longstanding partnerships with hunger relief organizations for maximum impact and have a small but mighty team that can pivot quickly to develop solutions that are tailored to the needs of our partners. We directly serve 400+ hunger relief partners and indirectly serve the 1.9 million people in Washington who need food assistance. We also help small to mid- scale growers develop contracted wholesale sales as part of their nascent businesses, many of which are BIPOC-owned. They are served through the following programs: 1. Our core work of locating imperfect yet healthy produce, coordinating harvesting and packaging, identifying a hunger relief organization that needs it and arranging transportation to deliver it. 2. Our three Farm to Community (F2C) programs (Farm to Food Pantry, King County Farmers Share and the Growing for Good Partnership with PCC Community Markets and Seattle Neighborhood Farmers Markets) cultivate new partnerships to connect hunger relief organizations with small to mid-scale growers across Washington. We provide technical support, ongoing management and funding to hunger relief organizations to purchase produce directly from local growers at wholesale (or lower) prices, which allows hunger relief organizations to focus on securing culturally relevant and nutrient dense produce that is otherwise difficult to provide and a stable base of small to mid-scale farms that contribute to a community's economic development. These relationships result in robust local farm economies, which ultimately strengthen communities. This year, we will focus on working with BIPOC growers who serve BIPOC communities. 3. Our Harvest VISTA program places full-time AmeriCorps VISTA members at hunger relief organizations, mainly in underserved and marginalized communities, to develop produce recovery and gleaning programs. This past year, we placed our first Harvest VISTA with a Tribal organization and over the long term, look forward to increasing the number of partnerships and program connections with Tribal organizations. 4. Through our capacity-building programs (launched several years ago with support from the Medina Foundation and Aven Foundation), we award capacity grants to hunger relief organizations that may lack cold storage or other resources to safely distribute food. We also continue to provide refurbished computers to hunger relief partners that need additional technology resources in partnership with a local high school technical certification program. 5. Building on the success of our Harvest VISTA work in Washington, we are supporting the development of the new WA State Gleaning Network to further strengthen ties and partnerships between and through hunger relief organizations collecting fresh produce and other foods to provide to those in need. While HAH played a key role in launching many of these programs, we believe there is an opportunity to support deeper connections between those organizations. 6. Cohort calls and gatherings: HAH continues to facilitate monthly open discussions for food bank warehouse staff and other groups from organizations across the state to share ideas, concerns, best practices, challenges and other topics. The format of these discussions is loosely structured, providing an opportunity for participants to learn from one another as well as to enhance the interconnectedness of the hunger relief network.