Flights for Food: behind the scenes

It’s eight days and counting until our Flights for Food event. Our office is a mishmash of half-baked centerpieces, auction baskets, auction items that haven’t found their way into baskets, and at least five colors of ribbon. Autographed sports memorabilia are cozying up to bottles of wine, party lights and glue guns. The planning began

Food for Others is turning 25

Do you remember where you were in 1995? (Perhaps you didn’t exist yet?) A quick Google search turns up a lot of facts about that year, both fun and tragic. The internet was pretty new (check out this Newsweek opinion about how the internet wouldn’t change our reading or shopping habits) and Starbucks released the

Impact of the Farm Bill and Trade on Food for Others

In 2019, twenty percent of the food that Food for Others received to distribute to our neighbors in need came from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). The USDA currently provides fresh and nutritious food to the country’s food banks thanks to the four-year Farm Bill signed by the President in 2018 that covers the

Hunters for the Hungry

Through the nonprofit organization, Hunters for the Hungry, Virginia hunters help hungry families get quality meat by donating their surplus game. Hunters throughout the state of Virginia can participate in their sport and ensure that the meat does not go to waste by donating it to Hunters for the Hungry which then distributes venison to

Books are Food for Your Brain

Foods for Others’ partner organization, Books are Food for Your Brain, works to improve literacy for low-income children in Northern Virginia by making sure that children who visit Food for Others have plenty of books to read in their homes. What is Books are Food For Your Brain? Books are Food for Your Brain provides

Community gardens provide space for families to grow their own produce

“Give someone a fish, and you’ll feed them for a day. Teach someone to fish, and you’ve fed them for a lifetime.” The origin of this quote is hotly contested, but its validity is most certainly not. Self-sufficiency is a sure way to promote better health outcomes within a community. But what happens when the

My eye-opening summer at Food for Others

My journey with Food for Others began in 2009, when I was going through a really tough time in my life. I had been in a traumatic event which put me into a depression and someone suggested that trying to give back to my community might help distract me from everything I had going on

Rx for Food

As the Executive Director of a food bank/pantry, I spend a lot of time thinking about how to reach hungry people in our community. Even though we serve over 30,000 individuals each year, we know that 75,000 people live in poverty in Northern Virginia. That gap keeps me up at night. How do we reach

Why I love volunteering at Food for Others . . .

I have been at Food for Others for about three years as one of our volunteers.  I will be starting my fourth year in 2020. For my first two and a half years I worked on the Power Pack Program, but now I work on both sides of the warehouse : in P3 and as