Nat’l Salvation Army Week, Part III: Hunger
National Salvation Army Week is May 9–15. To celebrate, The Salvation Army Northern Division will publish a special story every day of the event. Each story will highlight a topic or service that illustrates how The Salvation Army is Doing the Most Good® in Minnesota and North Dakota.
What do the frontlines of hunger look like in Minnesota and North Dakota?
Sadly, they often resemble this story, submitted by a Salvation Army Northern Division social worker:
One weekday morning, a student came to our food shelf asking for groceries. His mother asked him to stay home from school and make a trip to The Salvation Army so that his family could eat. The family had almost no food in their house. The young man told us, ‘The only thing I saw was cereal, but we have no milk.’ We gave him as many groceries as he could carry home.
Every day, The Salvation Army helps hundreds of others in similar situations.
Thankfully, people and families in need of food know they can rely on The Salvation Army. We are a leader in hunger abatement, operating 22 food shelves and 16 hot meal sites in Minnesota and North Dakota. Together, these programs last year provided more than 770,000 hot meals and 186,000 bags of groceries.
We’re able to serve so many people because we stretch our resources through strategic partnerships. These partnerships come in two main forms:
- Rescued food: We connect with local grocery stores that give us overstock items and nearly-expired meats, fruits, veggies, and bread. These free foods are distributed at our food shelves or used as ingredients for our hot meal programs.
- Bulk suppliers: When The Salvation Army must purchase our own food, we buy from bulk suppliers and receive monster discounts. The savings are so big, we can buy three bags of groceries for every one bag you can buy at your local grocery store using the same amount of money. The following video illustrates:
Salvation Army food programs are a godsend to people like Chris of Brainerd, Minn., who’s been caring for his two nephews while their mother battles mental health issues.
“I’m trying to help my sister and her kids, but it’s almost financially impossible,” Chris said. “This food shelf bridges the gap. It’s a blessing.”
Tailor-made
The Salvation Army is effective at serving food to mass amounts of people because many of our programs are tailor-made to fit their unique needs. Example: Our food shelf at the Payne Ave. Salvation Army in St. Paul offers coconut, baby corn, and other Asian foods for the local Hmong population.
Here are more examples of our tailored approach, plus other interesting food-related stories:
Decisions, decisions: Our soon-to-be-updated food shelf in North Minneapolis will feature a grocery-style model that will allow guests to choose which foods they want.
Medical food shelf: Our food shelf in Duluth, Minn., offers special foods for people with doctor-referred dietary needs.
Youth-only food shelves: Several of our Twin Cities food shelves are specifically designed to accommodate homeless youth.
PhilanthroFEED: The Salvation Army in St. Cloud, Minn., has created an innovative program that makes it easy for local businesses to fight hunger.
Five ways to fight hunger: Want to join the fight against hunger? Here are five ways to get involved today.
Please join us during National Salvation Army Week by volunteering or making a donation to support your local community.