Country Projects: United States of America

Overview

Food banking in the United States began in 1967, and the national network, Feeding America, was created in 1979.  The network has 205 food banks and provides food to nearly 100,000 feeding programs in all 50 states and Puerto Rico, reaching 25 million people.  Feeding America delivers a broad array of services to food banks, including food sourcing and allocation, training and technical assistance, fundraising, program development, public policy development, and public education.

GFN’s Involvement

Feeding America is one of GFN’s founding networks and has supported of our development and operations since our inception.

GFN supports food banking in the United States by helping strengthen partnerships with food and grocery companies headquartered outside the USA but doing business within the USA. We also have provided scholarships to the H-E-B/GFN Food Bank Leadership Institute each year for representatives from several Feeding America food banks.

Progress

Feeding America, not surprisingly, represents thet strongest national food bank system in the world.  It is where food banking began, and this network takes seriously its role as the legacy of the founder of food banking: John Van Hengel, who passed away in 2005.  Feeding America provides strong business partnership solutions to the food nad grocery industry, strong service partnerships to the Federal and state governments, and effective leadership to the voluntary sector in the battle against hunger and food insecurity in the United States of America.  Its success – and its challenges – inspire and motivate thousands of communities around the world to learn, adapt, and implement the food banking concept in service to their neighbors.

Learn more about Feeding America.