Impact of Your Donations

4Paws 4Wheels 4Hunger is supporting Save the Children’s number one goal: fighting threats to child survival, such as the lack of nutritious food. We are helping Save the Children fight child hunger so that all children everywhere can survive and thrive.

Specifically, you’ll help to bolster their ability to respond faster and reach more children in crisis, including the prepositioning of critical emergency supplies and food; combating hunger and saving lives.

Save the Children does whatever it takes to be there for children in crisis. Always at the ready, Save the Children is among the first to respond and the last to leave, staying as long as it takes to help children and families recover from their losses, restore their lives and build resilience for years to come. In 2019 alone, Save the Children helped 10.6 million children in crisis. The scale of crisis in the world has increased exponentially in recent years. In 2018 alone, 62 million people were affected by extreme weather events.

With each day, the risks to children’s health, nutrition, education and psychological welfare caused by the COVID-19 pandemic grows. The world’s leading expert on childhood, Save the Children is engaged in the most sweeping humanitarian response in its 101-year history. Save the Children aims to protect the lives and futures of a generation of children from the harms caused by the COVID-19 crisis. LEARN MORE

• NOURISH A CHILD
$15 – can save a life, feeding a severely malnourished child in crisis for 1 week
• PROVIDE EMERGENCY FOOD
$50 – can provide emergency food and food vouchers to fill a child’s hungry stomach
• FEED A FAMILY
$75 – can stem hunger, providing a month’s worth of nutritious food for a family in crisis

Last year, The Greater Boston Food Bank distributed 98.9 million pounds of healthy food, the equivalent of 82.4 million meals. The food distributed was not just any food, it was healthy food and included the following:

The Greater Boston Food Band strives to provide at least One Meal a Day to those in need in Eastern Massachusetts. The importance of their mission—and desire to always do more to help those who depend on them—has caused them to operate to the highest standards of cost-effectiveness. The Greater Boston Food Bank uses technology to achieve the greatest efficiency in its warehouse and put sound nutrition at the forefront of everything they do. As a result, when you donate to The Greater Boston Food Bank every dollar supplies three nutritious meals, including fresh produce.

The Merrimack Valley Food Bank relies upon the generous donations of individuals and groups in the business, faith-based and academic sectors to keep the food supply at a level that can help their member agencies serve their guests. Here are some of the ways they count on your support:

• They receive support of all types of funds and amounts, ranging from foundations and corporate sponsors to individual donations. Many companies will match gifts made by employees. (Contact your human resources manager for details.)
• In kind donations of food products, equipment and professional expertise are also valuable.
• They conduct annual fundraising events such as their Grape Expectations Wine Tasting Extravaganza in the spring and their Annual Golf Scramble & Awards Dinner in the fall.
• Food Drives provide non-perishable food like peanut butter, pasta, tuna fish, canned fruit and vegetables and personal care items.
• Food Company donations are usually in large quantities, and in some cases fill one of their large refrigerated trucks. They can safely transport and store refrigerated and frozen items on behalf of their member agencies, who may not have the resources to collect the volume of food in some of these donations.  These donations come from supermarkets, manufacturers, and distributors.
• Gardeners and Farmers donate fresh produce that is needed for a nutritious diet.

Every amount helps. Thank you!

$500 provides 1500 meals
$250 provides 750 meals
$100 provides 300 meals
$50 provides 150 meals
$25 provides 75 meals

Each year, the Worcester County Food Bank, Inc. distributes 5,985,278 meals to people struggling with hunger. They believe that hunger is a solvable problem – and that solving it involves real commitment from and partnership between individuals and businesses, foundations, organizations, legislators, financial supporters, food donors, volunteers, and advocates. Solving hunger involves you!

• 1 in 12 people (1 in 9 children) in Worcester County don’t have enough healthy food to eat. 
• 75,000 people turned to pantries and meal programs in the Worcester County Food Bank Partner Agency network for help finding food in Fiscal Year 2019.
• Of those served, 32% were children and 14% were seniors.
• Last year, they distributed the equivalent of 5.1 million meals’ worth of donated food. 
• Over half of the food they distributed fell into two broad categories: fruits/vegetables and proteins. 
• They held 3 advocacy trainings in different parts of the county, mobilizing attendees to speak up for policies and programs that decrease hunger by improving access to healthy food.

It’s a serious problem. You’re a part of the solution.

The Food Bank of Western Massachusetts is the umbrella organization for the emergency food network in western Massachusetts, bringing nutritious food to hundreds of their members, including pantries, meal sites, shelters, rehabilitation facilities, senior centers, and more. These organizations are the local front-line food assistance providers that serve people in need.

• Their Brown Bag: Food for Elders program provides a free bag of healthy groceries to eligible seniors once a month at local senior centers and community organizations. 
• Their Mobile Food Bank delivers a truck full of fresh and non-perishable groceries from their warehouse directly to a community site at a prescheduled time for immediate distribution to residents.
• SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) offers nutrition assistance to millions of eligible individuals and families across the country. 
• Their Nutrition Outreach team addresses many of the larger nutritional challenges facing our region and provides their community partners a variety of approaches aimed at helping people develop healthier eating and shopping habits. 
• The Network Capacity Building Program focuses on building the capacity of the emergency food network to provide more food to more people while increasing client self-reliance. 
• They lead the community to advocate for policy change, bring issues of hunger to the forefront, and empower their partners to take action and support solutions to food insecurity. 
• The Coalition to End Hunger was launched in 2017 as a result of recommendations developed in 2016 by the Task Force to End Hunger in western Massachusetts. 
• The Food Bank Farm is a 60-acre parcel of land on the Connecticut River in Hadley, protected from any development. It operates as a production farm in partnership with Mountain View Farm, which leases from The Food Bank in exchange for providing them at least 112,000 pounds annually of fresh, local, USDA Certified Organic produce. After years of searching, and with the support of the Kestrel Land Trust, The Food Bank is now the proud owner of its second Food Bank Farm in Hadley.