HUNGER FIGHT

Hunger Fight is bringing awareness to and combating the issues of food insecurity, hunger and illiteracy in our local communities. We accomplish this by hosting packing events utilizing thousands of volunteers from the community to package nutritious meals which are then distributed to hungry children and families every weekend. Businesses, civic organizations and individuals to come together as one to make a significant difference in their local community.

The organizational goals fulfill our mission: to end hunger and illiteracy through the provision of nutritious meals and books to children, seniors and families in need by informing, engaging and mobilizing communities and partners. Hunger Fight has developed a two-pronged approach to help children and families in need: a literacy program for children ages birth to age 5 and a nutrition program for school-age children. Hunger Fight strongly believes that every child should be well fed and well read, and it is our hope that these programs will provide a foundation on which to build. Our goals to help seniors at risk for hunger is to continue to expand our footprint by working collaboratively with other organizations to provide meals for distribution to seniors living in low income areas who are at risk for hunger.

Included in our strategic plan is the continued growth and expansion of our Backpack programming through the partnerships with our community, corporations and volunteers who support our mission. In addition, we have partnered with the Dolly Parton Imagination Library for a literacy program addressing emergent literacy skills in children ages 0-5. Through our on-going packing events, these programs are supported and expanded into new communities where the need is greatest. We continue to raise awareness to the issue of food insecurity, hunger and illiteracy through guest speaking, participation in community events, through our social media outlets and various public relations outlets.

Hunger Fight is different from other food organizations. We are more than a food bank or distribution source as we 1) produce and pack our own specially formulated, vitamin enrich meals for distribution; 2) through our partnership with Imagination Library, we provide books to address emergency literacy skills in children ages 0-5 through the provision of monthly books, 3) Hunger Fight is a Salvation Army Disaster Relief Partner and FEMA approved agency providing emergency meals in times of disaster; 4) our collaboration with other community programs sends meals to food pantries, food banks and missions feeding families, children, adults and seniors living in low income neighborhoods; 5) we offer scalable meal packing event programming to meet needs of sponsoring organizations; 6) collaborative approach with schools and key community programs for year-round food distribution.

2020 was a year of growth and expansion for Hunger Fight as our Hunger Fight Feed the Backpack program added new schools and our Feed the Need to Read program expanded to 42 zip codes. To date we have packed 10,866,386 meals were packed at 74 events utilizing 7,850 volunteers and 125,000 meals were sent for Covid relief.
This growth was largely a result of the change in our overall business strategy and revised business model developed by our Board of Directors. After reviewing our first three years of business, we realized our initial outlook and scattershot approach to distribution wasn’t producing the outcome we had envisioned. We reassessed our overall approach with research and discussions with our Board, sponsors and constituents. Based on that exercise, we strategically decided to shift our focus to those who cannot change independently their circumstances, namely children and seniors.
Going forward, Hunger Fight will continue to expand its services to additional schools and zip codes where services are needed. This will be accomplished through new partnerships and collaborative efforts within our community and with corporations, businesses and volunteers who believe in our mission.