NORTH TEXAS FOOD BANK

The school pantry program provides eligible students and their families access to non-perishable items, as well as fresh produce, through participating schools. Distributions occur once a month, typically after school. Students who visit the school pantry leave with 20-25 pounds of shelf-stable food items and 15 pounds of produce. School pantry programs operate in schools within close-knit communities where at least 90% of students qualifying for free/reduced meals. The program also serves college campuses. During the 2023-2024 school year, ntfb's 41 school pantry sites provided access to nearly 2.7 million meals.

The food 4 kids program feeds students facing hunger on the weekends when school feeding programs are closed and students are the most vulnerable. Food 4 kids provides children with backpacks of nutritious food every friday throughout the school year. Each backpack contains kid-friendly snacks carefully selected by our nutrition services manager to provide two-thirds of a child's weekend nutritional needs. In the 2023-2024 school year, food 4 kids provided more than 827,800 meals, operated in 251 schools and served an average of 4,500 children facing hunger each week. After participating in food 4 kids, children improved significantly on these measures: exhibited fewer behaviors associated with food insecurity, talked less frequently about issues related to food insecurity, were judged to be more emotionally healthy, and performed better academically.

The supplemental nutrition assistance program (snap) addresses the nutritional needs of low-income families and is one of the nation's most important defenses against hunger. Ntfb helps to increase enrollment through application assistance and providing snap information in 13 north texas counties to overcome barriers to participation. In fy24, ntfp provided access to 19.4 million meals through the snap program.