Ozarks Food Harvest is partnering with Panera Bread for Empty Bowls 2015. The annual event, set for Sept. 25, raises awareness of hunger in southwest Missouri.
For a donation to OFH, event-goers receive soup, a baguette and art to take home. The creations, ranging from pottery to carved wood, are meant to serve as a reminder of the thousands of “empty bowls” found on dinner tables across the Ozarks each night.
When there isn’t enough money for groceries to last to the end of the month, struggling families often turn to less expensive, unhealthy food options.
For Pamela and her family, fresh fruit and vegetables are always the first things to go when money is tight.
“I just can’t afford it,” she shared at a recent Ozarks Food Harvest Mobile Food Pantry distribution in Springfield. “It’s hard on everyone.”
Ozarks Food Harvest is hosting the first-ever milk voucher fundraiser on Saturday, May 30 at Rutledge-Wilson Farm Park. The goal of the event, The Great American Milk Drive, is to raise funds to provide milk to Springfield children, families and seniors. Special thanks to sponsors of the Great American Milk Drive 2015, who have already donated funds to provide more than 1,400 milk vouchers to food insecure individuals locally. There are multiple opportunities to get involved and help provide more milk to families who are currently receiving, on average, less than one gallon of milk per year from Food Bank hunger-relief organizations.
At Ozarks Food Harvest, we rely on you to support our mission with your valued donations. We’re grateful that year after year, you choose to continue to show compassion for people struggling with hunger.
While we have heard from some of you personally on why the mission of Transforming Hunger into Hope is so dear to your heart, we wanted to, on a larger scale, ask why you give to The Food Bank. This past fall we asked some of our most loyal and generous donors to participate in our 2014 Donor Survey, which consisted of three questions.
After nearly a year of work by Food Bank staff, I’m thrilled to announce the unveiling of a new Ozarks Food Harvest website.
Not only does the site have an improved look, but it’s also designed with you in mind. The homepage immediately grabs your attention with a looped video of our distribution center, giving you a behind the scenes look at OFH.
Greetings from the O’Reilly Center for Hunger Relief! I’m pleased to share with you the good news The Food Bank received last month — for the third consecutive year, Ozarks Food Harvest was awarded the highest possible rating from Charity Navigator.
Only 12 percent of charities in the country have received four star ratings for three consecutive years. This honor comes from the leading nonprofit corporation that evaluates charities across the country.
Five Pound Apparel and Ozarks Food Harvest began a new partnership this week, both online at 5poundapparel.com and in stores.
For every T-shirt sold, 5 Pound Apparel will provide a donation to Ozarks Food Harvest to purchase five pounds of food. Children, families and seniors struggling with hunger across southwest Missouri will benefit from the partnership. This is not the first time the local retailer has raised funds for Ozarks Food Harvest, but this new initiative will provide year-round support for those in need.
Just in time for Easter, Ozarks Food Harvest received a donation of 151,200 eggs from Opal Foods, headquartered in Neosho. The Food Bank has received half a million eggs from Opal Foods since the partnership began in 2008.
The Musgrave Foundation granted a total of $120,000 to select Ozarks Food Harvest partners in February. The funding will be utilized for food for local hunger-relief efforts. The regional food bank, the umbrella organization of more than 200 pantries and programs, will leverage the $120,000 to $1.2 million in food distribution.
Eighty grocery stores partnered with Ozarks Food Harvest during the holidays to help Check Out Hunger, collecting a record $49,786 in check-out lanes across the Ozarks.