Who invented food banks

With the help of a local church he established a centrally located warehouse from which any charity could receive donations — and the first food bank was born. From here the concept of foodbanking spread across the US and around the globe. Foodbank is now the largest hunger relief organisation in Australia — servicing over 2, charities in every state and territory to enable them to provide food to , people a month.

Foodbank is also a proud member of the Global Foodbanking Network, an international organisation dedicated to developing foodbanking around the world. She pitched the idea to her close friend, founding philanthropist Charles Scarf. Foodbank WA is now helping to feed more than 40, people every month. Foodbank Queensland quickly scaled up to achieve significant volume throughput by working closely with the abundance of fruit and vegetable farmers in the state.

Foodbank Queensland is now helping to feed almost , people every month. Foodbank SA is now helping to feed more than , people every month.

In Victoria material aid and food relief had commenced in , with the State Relief Committee responding to widespread distress caused by the Great Depression. Its works continued, including under the guidance of renowned philanthropist Dame Phyllis Frost from the mids to It formally changed its name to Foodbank Victoria in Foodbank Victoria is now helping to feed more than , people every month.

Foodbank NT is now helping to feed more than 6, people every month. In the s, for example in the influential research of Peter Townsend in the UK, this claim was shown to be unsustainable. Various programmes emerged, such as the food stamp programme in the US. Soup kitchens also continued to attract users. In Phoenix, Arizona, John van Hengel was dissatisfied with the limited efficiency and started looking for improvements.

After meeting a single mother with ten children who pointed out the amount of throwaway food available in grocery store dumpsters, he started collecting food that was still good for human consumption but no longer saleable by supermarkets. It not only helped to feed the hungry but also helped to solve the inexcusable wastage of perfectly edible food by the commercial food industry. Worldwide, there is excessive food production and affluence, but also inefficient food distribution and hunger.

Both could balance each other out. Soon, similar initiatives emerged in other cities throughout the USA. In van Hengel established Second Harvest to assist these local initiatives and facilitate the work of food banks. It later changed its name to Feeding America. By the time John van Hengel died at the age of 83, American foodbanks daily provided food for about 23 million citizens!

For the UK, it is estimated that currently half a million people rely on food banks. Over the years, the idea of food banks spread across and beyond the USA. In , the first European food bank was opened in France, followed by others such as Belgium in and the Netherlands in Here, food banks were not so much clearing houses of food to a decentralised network of distribution outlets, but rather direct contact points with hungry citizens.