The Food Bank of Delaware is campaigning for more funding this holiday season as it continues to augment its programs.
The FoodBank moved into its 80,000 square foot Newark headquarters in the spring.
In a News Journal op-ed this week, its President and CEO Patricia Beebe announced the FoodBank’s success in raising $15.5 million to move in and retrofit the new facility.
But she adds with the Food Bank’s expanded capacity has come expanded programs and new costs to go with them.
“Now what we’re doing is of course, because we’ve expanded so many programs, we’re in the process of looking for additional funding opportunities for those new programs,” said Beebe.
Beebe is making the case for donations to fund programs like the backpack program, which ensures food-insecure schoolchildren in Delaware have food on the weekend.
“It’s all shelf-stable food. So we make the—we call them—kits. We put together the kits and we deliver them to the schools on Friday and then they go home with the children so that they are able to have food to eat on both Saturday and Sunday,” she said.
Beebe says the FoodBank is also concentrating its fundraising efforts on its food pantry and workforce development programs, which have also seen growth since the Foodbank’s move.
Beebe says more than 117,000 Delawareans depend on the Food Bank.
She says monetary and food donations this holiday season have been going “very well” but adds there’s nothing “huge to report.”
She encourages those who are food-insecure to look for the Food Bank’s pop-up pantry schedule at its Facebook page.
