Smyrna-La Vergne Food Bank

Description

The Smyrna-La Vergne Food Bank has worked to address food insecurity in our target population since 1982. The SLFB provides a grocery cart full of food sufficient to feed each eligible family based on their family size to ensure everyone in the household receives breakfast, lunch, and dinner for a full week. Last year we distributed enough food to provide more than 93,000 meals to more than 1,800 unduplicated low-income families and children in financial and food insecurity crisis. These 1,800 often must come back to the food bank at least four times before they can successfully move beyond their time of crisis into increased food security. As part of our experience in reaching, engaging and serving our target population we:

• Have provided food to over 22,000 children and their families.
• Provide over 18,000 weeks worth of food every year.
• Offer a separate and supplemental holiday meal program that provides turkeys, hams, and holiday meal preparation items in addition to families’ regular food disbursement during the holiday season.
• Developed new initiative to offer high school equivalency training/testing and English as a Second Language classes onsite.

We have developed numerous community education and intervention opportunities to offer the community an opportunity to invest in the health and well-being of their neighbors.

• Organized over 500 volunteers to provide daily, ongoing as well as sporadic and special event volunteer opportunities to support clients directly as well as warehouse support.
• Provided food insecurity education to over 1,000 individuals across our community.