Great Plains Food Bank

CHILD HUNGER PROGRAMS: The GPFB operates a trio of programs aimed at eradicating childhood hunger. These programs include the backpack, youth summer meals and school pantry programs.The Great Plains Food Bank BackPack Program is the cornerstone of the GPFB's suite of programs directly targeting childhood hunger. Each year, more than 33,000 kids qualify for and greatly rely on the free and reduced cost school lunch program. But on the weekends when the school lunch program is not available, many of those children struggle with inadequate food supplies. The backpack program provides a bag full of kid-friendly food to children for the weekend, ensuring children return to school Monday morning healthy and ready to learn. During FY24, the GPFB partnered with 155 schools to provide a total of 171,745 backpacks to 6,670 children. The Great Plains Food Bank School Pantry Program is simply a food pantry located in a school, ensuring families and youth in need of assistance have easy access to food and other necessities. In FY24, the GPFB partnered with 93 schools in 24 communities to provide food for 171,167 meals to students and their families. The Great Plains Food Bank Youth Summer Meals program is designed to feed low-income children over the summer when they don't have access to school meals. The GPFB operates meals sites in low-income neighborhoods to provide well-balanced, nutritious meals to any child under age 18, free of charge. During the 2024 summer, GPFB's youth summer meal program provided 33,680 meals to children at 19 meal sites across North Dakota.

MOBILE FOOD PANTRY: The GPFB semi-trucks also serve as a food-pantry-on-wheels reaching food insecure individuals living in or near underserved communities. Truckloads of highly nutritious fresh produce along with boxes of shelf-stable food products are brought into communities and are met by volunteers who unload the food directly into client's cars. In FY24, the Great Plains Food Bank Mobile Food Pantry distributed food for 688,458 meals to families across North Dakota and Clay County, Minnesota.

ENDING HUNGER 2.0: In 2016 GPFB took the next bold step in ending hunger with a new initiative called Ending Hunger 2.0 (EH2.0). Focused on addressing the root causes of hunger through new solutions, EH2.0 goes beyond food to look holistically at the issue of hunger. It allows the GPFB to continue our core work of feeding people today through our partner network and direct service programs, while simultaneously working upstream to decrease the need and improve food security. EH2.0 works to bring sustainable, long-term solutions to hunger through advocacy, research, and community-based solutions. In 2017, we launched the Great Plains Food Bank Healthcare Initiative, putting healthy food into clinics. There is a growing trend within the healthcare realm to see food/nutrition as medicine and as treatment for many chronic diseases. In FY24, we worked with 7 healthcare partners at 30 sites and distributed food for 66,196 meals.In 2023, we launched Kitchen Coalition, which provides freshly prepared meals to neighbors. We know that not everyone facing hunger has the home, health, or ability to use the groceries our food bank offers. We work with a network of restaurants and caterers who prepare freshly prepared meals, which go to trusted nonprofits to get those meals to neighbors on a predictable schedule. In FY24, we distributed 27,654 meals across 7 distribution sites in 4 communities.

SNAP Outreach: In partnership with the state of North Dakota, the GPFB offers outreach to individuals who may be eligible for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly known as food stamps. The GPFB employs 1 full-time SNAP Manager and 2 full-time SNAP Outreach Coordinators who screen individuals for benefits and offer application assistance. In FY24, 698 SNAP applications were submitted which is attributed to 264,489 meals.