The Case For A New Food Bank

About Hunger

Because hunger often has no visible signs, it’s easy to think that it doesn’t affect people in our
community. In fact, hunger is a silent epidemic, and each year, hundreds of thousands of people are quietly seeking help from the approximately 600 member hunger-relief agencies in the nine counties and 190 cities and towns of eastern Massachusetts that receive food from The Greater Boston Food Bank.

About the Hungry

Hunger touches a broad cross-section of people from poor to middle-class families, and the most vulnerable among us: children and seniors.  People we know: our friends, neighbors, and colleagues. Sometimes all it takes is one bad break to create a situation in which people have to make painful
trade-offs. They must choose between paying rent and shopping for groceries, between filling a prescription and eating dinner, or between heating their homes and feeding their families.

About The Greater Boston Food Bank

There is more than enough food available, and The Food Bank is the critical link between those who have food to give and those who need it most. More than 83,000 people benefit from the stable supply
of nutritious food that The Food Bank distributes each and every week. In fact, The Food Bank distributed more than 30 million pounds of food and grocery products in 2008 which was enough to feed more than 320,000 people.

About the New Food Bank

The Food Bank had maximized its ability to store and distribute food at its previous facility. So, with the help of our many friends and partners, we worked tirelessly to develop a solution that would enable us to distribute more food, and subsequently help more people.  As a result, after more than five years of planning and 18 months of construction, the Yawkey Distribution Center of The Greater Boston Food Bank opened for operation in the spring of 2009. The 117,000 square-foot facility in the Newmarket area of Boston will allow us to significantly increase the acquisition, storage and distribution of food and grocery products throughout the course of the next 15 years to nearly 50 million pounds annually.

How you can help

Hunger is unnecessary – there’s plenty of food to feed everyone. We’re doing all we can to acquire, store and distribute nutritious food to those in need.  But we cannot do it alone.