High Plains Food Bank - Our Programs

On Friday, August 14, 2009, the High Plains Food Bank launched its community garden with the kickoff event "Day of Caring". The Food Bank's community garden sits on approximately 1.5 acres of land between 8th and 9th Avenues (on the north/south) and Ross and Osage Streets (on the east/west). The garden is located on the same city block as the High Plains Food Bank; the Food Bank purchased the land the garden sits on earlier in 2009.

The goal for the garden is two-fold: to provide our agencies and the community with garden-fresh produce and to utilize the natural assets the earth has to offer by planting and growing in an eco-friendly manner.

The community garden is one of the first "green" gardens in the community. Workers will help ensure that the garden can be utilized continuously by using elevated planting beds (or lasagna beds/gardening) - see main photo above. By using lasagna-style gardening, no digging or tilling is required for planting the vegetables*. This is because the "bed" is compiled of a wide variety of materials (grass clippings, leaves, fruit and vegetable scraps, coffee grounds, tea leaves and tea bags, weeds-if they haven't gone to seed, manure, compost, seaweed, shredded newspaper or junk mail, pine needles, spent blooms, trimmings from the garden, peat moss, etc*) and is elevated off the ground.

The High Plains Food Bank will use the produce to distribute to our 161 agencies throughout the Texas Panhandle. The community garden will also be used to supplement our Kids Cafe program with fresh produce. The Food Bank is also working on other plans to best utilize the garden (more details coming soon). Most importantly, it's a great way to distribute food to those in need because it came straight from the earth in which we live. Check back often for more details!

The High Plains Food Bank needs volunteers for its community garden. We are looking for volunteers that would be interested in volunteering on a regular basis (as the garden will be a year-round project). We need volunteers to help us on a weekly and/or monthly basis. Volunteers are also needed Monday through Friday. We are confident that once you see our community garden, you will want to come back!

Volunteer Schedule: We need volunteers Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. and 1 p.m. to 4 p.m; Saturdays: 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. If you sign up for a volunteer shift, we ask that each volunteer work the entire shift (this will accomplish tasks that will make the garden more beneficial - remember our garden takes up the width of an entire city block!).

Volunteer Procedure: If you are interested in volunteering, please contact Morgan Dezendorf, the Food Bank's Garden Volunteer Coordinator, at morgan@hpfb.org. The Food Bank asks that you contact Morgan at least 24-48 hours before the day of the requested volunteer shift. In addition, we ask that you e-mail Morgan to confirm (after the volunteer shift has been setup) that you will be coming out for your scheduled shift (this helps our garden staff properly prepare for your arrival). Volunteer limit per shift: 30 persons.

Attention Businesses and Organizations!: This is an excellent opportunity for your company or organization to come out and help. We will specifically set a Saturday morning aside for your business or organization to volunteer in our community garden. Please contact Morgan for more details: morgan@hpfb.org.

For more information, please call Nellie Ramon, Outreach Coordinator at the High Plains Food Bank: (806) 374-8562. Additional information is available at www.yourtexasbenefits.com.

To request an educational presentation, printed materials, volunteer training or application assistance at a community event in your Texas Panhandle community, call (806) 374-8562 or e-mail outreachcoordinator@hpfb.org.

The High Plains Food Bank of Amarillo is the community-based organization contracted with the Texas Health and Human Services Commission to conduct outreach and application assistance in the Texas Panhandle for the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP), Medicaid, Food Stamps or SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program), Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), long-term care (Medicaid for the Elderly and People with Disabilities) and the Medicaid Women's Health Program.

The “Fresh Recovery” store pick-up program provides needy families access to fresh food from United’s eight Amarillo and Canyon locations.

Through the program United Supermarkets donates fresh meat, produce, deli items and dairy products that are still usable but are approaching the “sell by” date. Donated products are pulled from stores’ shelves and stored at the proper temperature. Each day the High Plains Food Bank's refrigerated trucks pick up the donated items from the seven Amarillo stores and one Canyon store and return it to the food bank. The food is distributed to HPFB clients within 24 hours.

The program yields more than 5,000 pounds of fresh food to the food bank each week. The High Plains Food Bank currently provides more than 6,000 meals per week to families in need.

Everyone who receives the food can rest assured that the food is safe for consumption.

“These local efforts are in concert with the program developed recently by Feeding America and the Conference for Food Protection that allows for foods requiring refrigeration to be safely distributed to charity using refrigerated vehicles,” explained Cheryn Hargrave, food safety specialist for United Supermarkets, LLC.

(Above): an example of the fresh food products donated by United Supermarkets. If you look closely at the egg located on the top row, second from right, you will notice that it is cracked. United cannot use this dozen of eggs - however, instead of throwing the entire dozen in the trash, it donates the remaining eggs to the High Plains Food Bank. The Food Bank will handle and clean the remaining 11 eggs and send them out to those in need in the Texas Panhandle.

In Savannah, Georgia in 1989, two young brothers were discovered late one night in the kitchen of their housing project's community center. When asked why they had broken in, the oldest boy replied, "to feed myself and my little brother."

In response to this glaring example of childhood hunger in their local community, the Second Harvest Food Bank of Coastal Georgia started the first Kids Cafe. Kids Cafe is the nation's largest charitable meal service program exclusively for needy children. It is a program of Feeding America and is sponsored by ConAgra Foods "Feeding Children Better Foundation". Founded in 1993, there are currently 130 America's Second Harvest food banks and food rescue organizations operating more than 1,600 Kids Cafe sites, serving more than 13 million meals and snacks each year to children in 42 states and Washington D.C.

For many children in the Texas Panhandle, hunger is a frightening reality faced daily. Over 68% of all children enrolled in the Amarillo Independent School District are eligible for free or reduced meals.

Through our Kids Cafe programs and community support, we are addressing this growing problem. The High Plains Food Bank supplies the funds for the food and the cook needed to prepare the meals. The member agencies provide the facility, kitchen and volunteers to serve the meals to the children.

In 2005, Feeding America conducted a Hunger Study across the United States. Of the households surveyed with children under the age of 18 in the Texas Panhandle, it found that over 36% of children are hungry. Of those surveyed, 83% of households with children under 18 in the Texas Panhandle are food insecure. Through our Kids Cafe programs and your support, we are taking on this growing problem.

Humphrey's Highland Elementary - Monday through Friday, 4:00 p.m. - 5:30 p.m.

Maverick Boys & Girls Club - Monday through Friday, 4:00 p.m. - 5:00 p.m.

If you are interested in volunteering at our Kids Cafe program in Amarillo, you will need to first complete several steps:

First of all, you will need to complete a Volunteer Registration/Background Information form (this is required from the Amarillo Independent School District). Please note this process can take up to two weeks to complete. Link: Volunteer Registration/Background Information form.

Second, please call us at (806) 374-8562 to see what locations and times need volunteers. Ultimately, the Food Bank needs sustainable volunteers (or volunteers that will be willing to volunteer a certain each day, week or month - for example, every 3rd Tuesday of each month). This would greatly help our Kids Cafe. By becoming a sustainable volunteer, you will help us feed more children each week night!

Lastly, please review our Guidelines for Kids Cafe Volunteers form. This will give you tips on volunteering and how to help the Kids Cafe program. Kids Cafe staff contact information is also located on this form. Link: Guidelines for Kids Cafe Volunteers form.

The Kids Cafe program would not be able to function without your steadfast support. If you have any additional questions, please contact Noelia Reynoso, Amarillo Kids Cafe Coordinator at (806) 374-8562 or email her at noelia@hpfb.org.

Thanks to our ongoing volunteer groups for keeping the program running:

Baptist Community Service, First Christian Church, High Plains Food Bank staff and Board of Directors, Junior League of Amarillo, Park Centeral, Polk Street United Methodist Church, Rotary East Club of Amarillo, Rotary South of Amarillo, RSVP, Xcel Energy and WTAMU's SIFE group

The Food Connection

The Food Connection is a program that rescues unserved, prepared food from restaurants, caterers, cafeterias, supermarket delis, and bakeries, and delivers it free of charge to agencies with on-site meal programs. The program meets the daily challenges of connecting food donors to people in need.

Amarillo National Executive Dining Room
Auntie Ann’s Pretzels
Big Lots Stores
Cal-Main Foods, Inc.
Cargill Cattle Feeders – Dalhart, Texas
Chic-Fil-A
Coca Cola
Donut Stop
Great Harvest Break Company
Hilmar Cheese
J & T Distributing
JBS Swift Meat Co.
Olive Garden Restaurant
Papa John’s Pizza
Pepperidge Farms/ Tony Weir
Pepsi Bottling Company
Red Lobster Restaurant
Starbuck’s Coffee
Village Cafe/Bakery

Our collaborative effort with the Texas Department of Criminal Justice's Second Chance Program is a win-win situation for all involved. Inmates from the Clements Unit come to the Food Bank each day to sort salvage, fill orders, load agency vehicles and clean the warehouse. We train the inmates in job skills such as forklift certification, filling out job applications and safe food handling. This training will provide inmates with the knowledge to find a job once they are released. We also have a 26-acre tract of land adjacent to the prison. This land is used as a garden to work maximum-security inmates. The garden is designated as the High Plains Food Bank Garden and we receive the produce. We decide on the produce to be grown, and the inmates supply the labor.

The Meat the Need program began in 1993 to help meet the nutritional need for high protein foods. The program enables farmers, ranchers, feedlots and hunters to help supply much needed protein meat products. The donated meat is then processed and distributed by the Food Bank to member agencies.

Each night there are many people going to bed on an empty stomach. These people are sitting in the middle of "beef country" and have never had beef on their tables because they could not afford it. The goal of the Meat the Need program is to help alleviate this problem and enable everyone to experience the Panhandle's greatest commodity: beef.

The meat products donated to the High Plains Food Bank must be processed before distribution. Since we do not pass the processing fees along to our member agencies, the Food Bank must raise funds to assist with any processing fees incurred. Our annual golf tournament in May benefits this program.

Farmers, ranchers and feedlots can deliver the animal to a participating processor and we will take care of the rest. It is then processed into 2-pound packages of ground meat. This way the ground beef could then be best utilized by people in many ways to feed their families. The processor then calls the Food Bank, and the meat product is then picked up in our refrigerated truck on the next monthly rural route delivery to the processor's community.

The High Plains Food Bank received a generous corporate donation through the Cargill Corporation in October 2004 to offset a portion of the processing fees.

Since meat products are in very high demand, high protein products do not stay long at the Food Bank. Our beef donations fluctuate annually depending on the market. In 2004, we received 16,633 pounds of meat product. We are always looking for donations of high-protein food items to help us Meat the Need and alleviating hunger in the Texas Panhandle.

Ede's Custom Meats (Amarillo), Scroggins Meat Processing (Canadian), Dalhart Processing Plant (Dalhart), Circle B Meat Company (Groom), Brown's Meat Locker Inc. (Stratford), Swisher Meat Company (Tulia) and Clint & Sons (White Deer)

The Food Bank is a Panhandle agency. In order to feed those in need throughout the Panhandle, the Food Bank must be able to deliver product to our rural agencies in 23 communities. Our rural delivery service is expensive as we run trucks into the Panhandle three times a week. The Rural Delivery Service (RDS) began in 1986 with food delivery into several area towns. RDS deliveries are made in the Food Bank's two refrigerated trucks enabling area agencies to receive greater quantities of food including fresh vegetables, frozen and perishable food products and a much greater quantity of dry product than can be transported by private vehicle. In 1993, the Food Bank distributed 249,000 pounds of food into eight area towns once a month. In 1993, MAZON: A Jewish Response to Hunger began giving us assistance with RDS and enabled us to add delivery into three area towns. In 1995, the MAZON grant enabled us to deliver into Perryton and enabled us to begin free delivery service to our out of town agencies. Additional grants from MAZON: A Jewish Response to Hunger, the Brumley Foundation, the Payne Foundation and the Swalm Foundation have allowed us to deliver to our 24 rural counties of the Texas Panhandle!

Packaged and canned foods are not all the High Plains Food Bank distributes to feed those in need. Fresh fruits and vegetables have become a very important factor of distribution here at the Food Bank. The Surplus Agriculture Product Grant Program encourages donations of Texas grown product to the Texas Food Bank Network (TFBN). The grant reimburses a portion of the donors growing and packaging costs. The grant also defrays costs of transporting donated Texas grown product throughout the state to feed those in need. Donors of produce include local grocers, statewide wholesalers, farms and the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) gardens.

Examples of our produce include apples, oranges, melons, lemons, limes, and lettuce. Fruits and vegetables are an essential key to maintaining healthy diets, and thanks to this grant, we can offer fresh produce to our agencies for quick distribution. The Food Bank distributes over 800,000 thousand pounds of fresh fruits and vegetables throughout the Panhandle annually.

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