Worcester County Food Bank, Inc.
This is a huge and complex undertaking—20 staff,
nearly 700 volunteers, distributing 4.5 million pounds
of donated surplus food, valued at $7 million, to its
network of 200 partner agencies, serving 71,000
individuals in 60 communities of Worcester County.
Founded in 1982, as a project of Catholic Charities,
by 1991 they were independently incorporated; their
current mission is “to engage, educate, and lead
Worcester County in creating a hunger-free community.”
For their 25th Anniversary, WFB and the
Worcester Historical Museum have mounted a joint
exhibit on hunger and society’s response to it. WCFB
is obviously “engaging, educating, and leading”
Worcester County in this field, and has won numerous
local, state, and even national awards. Donors may
ask, is immense productivity in redistributing surplus
food the same as “creating a hunger-free community”?
The food market has two tiers, or “harvests”:
the normal wholesale-retail market we all know, and a
second tier that gathers and redistributes the first tier’s
surplus to many low-income consumers. Is anyone still
hungry? Finding and feeding them is the job of the
200 partner agencies, but there is no comprehensive
system evaluating their combined thoroughness. This
will be the next and final step in defeating hunger,
and WFB will be a leader—with your help.

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