Mission Statement

Our mission is to provide comprehensive and compassionate HungerCare whenever and wherever it is needed to safeguard the health, well-being and productivity of food-insecure Kansas families and their children, as well as senior citizens, the homeless and the chronically ill and impoverished among us.

History

In the last 1970's and early 1980's, hundreds of laid-off workers in Wichita placed increased demand onto an already overburdened system for emergency feeding.  Lionel Alford, then President of Boeing's Wichita Division, had a special interest in the situation and became a catalyst for a group of men and women who worked to fashion a solution.  Through the work of Mr. Alford, the group brought together the best and brightest leaders from the business, labor and religious communities in Wichita to conceive and implement the plan for the Kansas Foodbank Warehouse, Inc.

Kansas Foodbank Warehouse, Inc. was incorporated in 1983 and began operations on March 16, 1984, in a rented building serving 16 agencies in Sedgwick County.  It distributed 100,000 pounds of food in the first six months.  Since that time, it has expanded to serving over 400 agencies in 86 Kansas counties distributing over 4.5 million pounds of food each year.  These counties cover more than 73,000 square miles in Kansas. 

In 1985, the Kansas Food Bank became affiliated with America's Second Harvest, the national network for collecting and distributing millions of tons of food otherwise destined to be discarded and marketable waste.  The affiliation allows the Kansas Food Bank to obtain food from national corporations, a resource that was previously unavailable in Kansas.

In 1987, the Kansas Food Bank moved to a larger renovated facility from which it has worked to raise awareness of the issue of hunger in Kansas. 

In 1990, Koch Industries funded the Food Purchase Program to provide more nutritious, protein oriented food to the diets of our clients.  The Food Bank locates food at a much reduced cost and passes on this savings to our agencies.  The money rotates and is used continually to provide high protein, high demand products - meat, peanut butter, etc. to agencies so they can provide a more nutritious meal to their clients.

In 1994, the Kansas Food Bank opened its first Kids Kitchen at the Boys and Girls Club of Oaklawn.  The second Kids Kitchen was opened in August, 1996, at the Boys and Girls Club at 21st and Grove.  The Kids Kitchen provides a free nutritious meal to approximately 350  children after school and throughout the summer months.  This program also focuses on nutritional education and good eating habits.  The Kansas Food Bank provides the food and cooks for each Kitchen.

In 1995, Governor Graves appointed a task force to look into the results of a study that showed that one in 22 Kansas children were at risk of being hungry each month.  The task force determined the primary reason for hunger was that otherwise available food was not accessible to people in poverty in rural Kansas.  This same year, 1995, the Kansas Food Bank initiated a rural delivery system that distributes food to rural agencies in Eastern, Northern, and Western Kansas, delivering products to Independence, Salina, Emporia, Junction City, Garden City, and Liberal.

In 1997, the Kansas Food Bank purchased and remodeled a building in Independence, Kansas, which opened in August, 1997 to serve agencies in Southeast Kansas.  The facility doubled the amount of food distributed to Southeast Kansas because of accessibility.

In September of 2004, the Kansas Food Bank began the “Food 4 Kids” backpack program.  Food 4 Kids is a national program of America’s Second Harvest now in place and working in a number of A2H affiliate food banks across America.  This project is designed to fill in the weekend gap that now exists in feeding programs that have been designed to serve children at the highest risk of chronic undernourishment.  At the close of school year 2005/2006, the Food Bank was in 73 schools throughout our service area sending over 1,276 food packets home with chronically hungry children each Friday.  By the end of the 2006/2007 school year, the Food Bank was in over 153 schools and handing out over 2,730 packs of food each Friday.  We expect the amount of chronically hungry children to double by the end of the 2007/2008 school year.

These low-income, food insecure children rely on school breakfasts and lunches throughout the five weekdays, but have no such support on Saturday and Sunday.  On these two days, most have barely enough to eat and some must go without food altogether.  The Food 4 Kids program provides kid-friendly food such as cereal, shelf-stable milk, healthy snacks and single-serve fruit cups and soup.  These are put into backpacks and sent home with needful children every Friday during the school year.

Our newest rescue endeavor is our Food Recovery Program in which we have enlisted 27 food service establishments in the Greater Wichita Area.  These establishments (mostly restaurants) agree to freeze, pack, mark and label prepared but unserved food and to store it for our pick-up.  Then we pick up the perfectly edible “left-overs” in our new refrigerated van (obtained through a grant from the Ford Motor Company and Paul Newman’s Own) and deliver the meals to those directly serving the homeless and the desperately hungry.  Thus far, we have recovered and delivered an average of 1,500 pounds of food per month.

The Kansas Food Bank has become the heart and soul of the war against hunger in Kansas.  KFB is the primary source of free or low-cost food for over 400 501(c)3 agencies in Kansas.  These agencies are church pantries, community pantries, on-site feeding programs, spouse abuse centers, drug and alcohol rehabilitation centers and children's homes.  KFB works with other America's Second Harvest agencies to share large quantities of food that any one food bank could not distribute alone.  KFB is also the major source of food for disaster relief, supplying food to both the Salvation Army and America Red Cross.