Second Harvest Food Bank of Clark, Champaign & Logan Counties (SHFB) is a food bank program of Catholic Charities of Southwestern Ohio with a mission to increase capacity to provide hunger relief to a greater number of clients, improve the nutritional value of food distributed and to advance hunger awareness through education.
A food bank is a non-profit hunger relief organization that receives food donations to distribute to the disadvantaged, with a sole purpose to assist the hungry. SHFB provides affordable, nutritious food to their 8 member agencies in Champaign County and 49 member agencies in Clark County. Food allotted to agencies will then be further distributed to their respective clients and communities. SHFB’s daily operations consists of sourcing and gathering food, sorting and cataloging the food, then warehousing the inventory to be distributed throughout a three county service area.
One in six Ohioans are considered to be food insecure, meaning they are without reliable access to a sufficient quantity of affordable, nutritious food. In Clark County, nearly two in five of our neighbors are food insecure, according to Feeding America. SHFB works to alleviate hunger in Clark and Champaign Counties by providing affordable, nutritious food to its local partner agencies. SHFB serves residents in these counties with incomes at or below 200% of the Federal Poverty Guideline.
In 2016 the Community Health Assessment identifies food access as an area of concern in Clark and Champaign Counties. Feeding America’s Map the Meal Gap (2017) measures the food insecurity rate in these counties at 15.8% in Clark County with 21,680 individuals, and 12.7% in Champaign County with 5,020 individuals. Limited access to supermarkets, super centers, grocery stores, or other sources of healthy and affordable food retailers may make it harder for some of the county residents to eat a healthy diet. There are many ways to measure a food store’s accessibility for individuals and neighborhoods, including accessibility to sources of healthy food (as measured by distance to a store or by the number of stores in an area), and transportation restrictions (i.e. no vehicle and/or limited or no access to public transportation). Along with the food bank, SHFB also provides Mobile Pantry services to about 2500 households in these counties to further alleviate hunger.
United Way is proud to fund an agency that is making such an impact in the communities of Champaign and Clark Counties. If you are interested to learn more about, or get involved with, Second Harvest Food Bank then check out their website
Second Harvest Food Bank of Clark, Champaign & Logan Counties
or call (937) 325-8715.
