February 22, 2008

Philabundance Program Bears Fruit

Philadelphia Business Journal - by Peter Key Staff Writer

Philabundance testing a program to provide fresh fruits and vegetables directly to people who can't afford them.  The hunger-relief nonprofit launched Fresh For All in December at two sites -- one in Woodlyn, Delaware County, and one in Salem, N.J. It will bring the program to a Camden site this week and to a site in Burlington County, N.J., later this year.

Fresh For All marks the first time Philabundance has distributed food directly.

The agency provides food to about 600 social agencies in 10 Pennsylvania and New Jersey counties, which then serve and distribute it to their clients. In fiscal 2006, it distributed 26 million pounds of food, much of which came from national and local food manufacturers, wholesalers, retailers, brokers and distributors.

Through its traditional distribution method, Philabundance reaches about 65,000 people. It estimates, however, that there are 900,000 people in its territory that could use its services. As a result, it's trying to think of ways to reach more of them. Fresh for All is the first of the new efforts it is putting into practice, but it may not be the last.

"This is not only a pilot program in and of itself, but also a pilot of, 'Can we, as an organization, distribute directly to people?'" said Kelly Hile, the Fresh for All program manager.

Philabundance decided to make produce the focus of its first direct-distribution program because "it's one of the most expensive items that people purchase, and so it's one of the first things that are cut from diets when people find the budget getting tight," Hile said.

The program's goal is to provide 250 households at each of its two sites with five pounds of food per week. Philabundance distributes food at each site for an hour and tries to bring three or four fruits and four or five vegetables to each site weekly. All the produce is donated, with much of it coming from vendors at the wholesale produce terminal in South Philadelphia.

Philabundance asks people who receive food at the sites to provide basic information about their households but doesn't turn anyone away. The information it has gotten indicates that "the people who are coming are legitimately using the program," Hile said.

Philabundance chose to launch Fresh For All in "the outlying counties because they tend to have a sparser population of agencies," she said. "There's less agencies out there and so people would have to travel farther to get assistance."

Response to Fresh For All "has been fantastic," Hile said. "We've seen the number of people visiting the sites continuing to grow each week."

To cope with the program's success, Philabundance is seeking volunteers to give out food at the Fresh For All sites. Information is available on the organization's Web site, www.philabundance.org.

In addition to reducing hunger, Philabundance thinks Fresh For All may combat obesity among low-income people. That's especially important in New Jersey, which has an obesity rate of 17.5 percent, the nation's highest, among young, low-income children from two to five years old, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

When low-income families encounter money woes, they change the type of foods they eat rather than eating less, according to a study by the Center on Hunger and Poverty at Brandeis University and the Food Research and Action Center, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit.

That change leads them to buy foods that provide the biggest caloric bang for the buck. That, coupled with the fact that people who are unsure about getting food tend to eat a lot of food when they have it, can lead to them becoming overweight, according to the study.

New York may take an unusual step to address this problem. If approved by City Council, the Green Cart Proposal would provide an additional 1,500 food cart permits over the next two years to vendors willing to sell produce in neighborhoods with few or no grocery stores.

pkey@bizjournals.com