For the first time this year, Wichita children who rely on free and reduced meals at school will have a place to eat lunch over Spring Break.  Partners for Wichita has teamed up with us to provide meals at seven locations throughout the city.   Click here to see the map and find out more.

Here is a list of items that we will be packaging for each family:

To participate in this event, you may do the following:

1. Provide a box filled with these items.
2. Provide the items and we will box them for you.

We will be collecting donations from February 27 through March 9. All food donations may be dropped off at:

The Kansas Food Bank, 1919 E. Douglas, Wichita, KS 67211
(Please label donations with Break 4 Kids)

First of all, there are several activities that happen daily at the food bank:

• Volunteers pack Food 4 Kids packets to serve over 6,400 children a week, in more than 100 school districts across the state
• Drivers pick up donations at local retailers, this is food that would otherwise have been destroyed
• Warehouse staff pull and pack orders for all of the agencies
• Agencies in and around Wichita come in to pick up their orders
• Trucks from all over the country deliver product to us that must be inventoried and processed
• We answer numerous phone calls directing people to pantries for food assistance

During the first six working days of the month our delivery team of staff and volunteers deliver Food 4 Kids (F4K) Packets to Sedgwick County and surrounding areas.   The other F4K packets are piggy-backed on to our rural delivery routes to help us keep our costs minimal.

Feb 1 – Order Day.  This is the day when all the agencies can call in to place their order.  They receive a shopping list and at 8:00 a.m. the frenzy begins!  This month we processed 80 agency orders totaling just over 175,000 pounds of product, and that was just the first day!  Our agencies get to pick and choose what they want to distribute and sometimes things go really fast off the shopping list.  (Just how many fruit cakes can we move?  That was the hot ticket item this month!)

Feb 2 – Agency orders along with F4K backpacks for the Concordia and Junction City route are delivered by our driver.

Feb 3 – Agency orders for Southeast Kansas are delivered to our warehouse in Independence.  From there, agencies either pick up their order or we deliver to them based on geographic location.  And throughout the month, our delivery team in SE KS travels that area to dispense backpacks to our school partners.

Also this is a commodity month, so for three days we are busy receiving two semi-loads of food,  sorting product for the TEFAP distributors in Sedgwick County.

Feb 8 –  We are on the road delivering to the Dodge City and Garden City area.   Along with the F4K packets, eleven agencies in that area depend on us to make the monthly trek out west.

Feb 10 – It’s back on the road again for our driver.  This time to the East border of the state.  We stop in Toronto, Iola, Ft Scott, Prescott and LaCygne for agencies and several schools in-between.  Then it’s over to Garnett for F4K as well as our first mobile pantry into Anderson County.

Feb 13 & 14 – We take off for Salina to drop orders and then head to the far NW corner of Kansas.  We hit Victoria, Ellis and Colby on the way to our final stop of the day in Goodland.  The next morning the driver heads to St. Francis, Bird City, Phillipsburg, Alton and ends in Beloit.  The schools on this route are worked in to optimize our delivery costs.

Feb 14, 15 & 16 – Computer training for our staff.  We are working towards getting a long awaited upgrade to our computer system.  That means we will all be bleary eyed by the end of the last day!

Feb 16 – The rural driver is off to Liberal.  Along the way he stops in Bloom & Plains.  Then after the drop in Liberal it is off to Hugoton and Ulysses and finally back home.  And we can’t forget the schools, F4K packets make the trip too!

Feb 20 – Time for the Hays run.  Our driver delivers to Hays, Larned & Great Bend as well as numerous schools.

Feb 22 – Then final rural delivery route is dispatched to Emporia where we serve eleven different agencies and schools in the surrounding area.

Feb 29 – A quick inventory and recount of items for the shopping list is completed and we start all over in March.

Who knew, so much goes on here as we strive to meet the needs of food insecure Kansans, providing all or part of a meal to 32,000 of those in need each and every week!

As part of their Smart Giving Program, Smart Chicken donated 13,887 pounds of chicken to the Kansas Food Bank.  This is the 9th year for the program.  The donation pounds are based on the pounds of Smart Chicken sold at Dillon’s Stores during the month of December.  This year we received 3,000 more pounds than last year due to increased sales at Dillon’s.    Pictured above is Kevin Enz of the Kansas Food Bank and Joe Horvath, Account Manager from Smart Chicken.  We think they made a very “smart” choice in choosing the Kansas Food Bank!

Looking for something to do after Christmas, check out Illuminations at Botanica.  Donate two cans of food for the Kansas Food Bank and adults get in for the price of a child’s ticket.  December 26 – December 31.

Unopened containers of peanut butter can be donated at any of CBOK’s eight branches — Kingman, Winfield, Medicine Lodge, Isabel, Turon, Pretty Prairie, East Wichita and West Wichita – until Friday, December 30, 2011.