Urban Gleaners mission is to help alleviate hunger by collecting edible food that would otherwise be discarded from grocery stores, farmers markets, restaurants, farms and event sites to be delivered to any of our 17 partner elementary schools. Founded in 2006 by a single family, Urban Gleaner’s grassroots model of ‘reducing waste and want’ has grown into a network of 40 food donors and over 35 volunteers recovering thousands of pounds of food.

In 2009, we began our Food to Schools Program focusing mostly in East Multnomah County where 75-90% of children are living below the poverty line and regularly rely on free school lunches for what is often their only meal of the day. Each participating school receives weekly deliveries of 500-800 pounds of fresh food with an emphasis on whole grains, dairy products and organic fresh produce from farmers markets and local farms.

With Oregon ranked number two in the nation for childhood hunger, our Food to Schools Program is the highest priority for Urban Gleaners.
Since its inception, the F2S Program has grown exponentially. We now service 50+ families per school (a total of 850 students or 3,400 individuals) and we have an ever-growing waiting list of schools anxious to participate.

Through our Food to Schools Program We:

– Rescue 35,000 lbs of edible food a month from landfills. That’s nearly 3 millions pounds of food recovered since 2006
– Feed over 850 families each week with a delivery of food
– Are part of a larger national emergency food movement that rescues 70 million pounds of food a year.

Urban Gleaners takes the pledge to end childhood hunger, and we have a plan . . .

The Project:

Despite Urban Gleaners’ robust F2S program, we are just scratching the surface of the staggering need in Portland. We have over 12 schools waiting to participate in our program but we are unable to serve them due to our limited resources.
Urban Gleaners has occupied the same 900 square foot warehouse space since our beginning in 2006. We see nearly 35,000 lbs of food a month move through our distribution center and we can’t fit much more. In order to respond to the increasing number of Portland’s food-insecure children, we require a larger space, better equipped for the scope of our immense project.

Our new warehouse space will be at least three times as large as our current home, furnished with many more amenities critical to performing our task. The new space will have a separate room to deal with the increasing amount of prepared food we receive. This food is coveted by our partner schools; families participating our program often don’t have the resources to cook and prepare food at home themselves.

By moving from a 900 square food space into 5,000 square feet we can triple our capacity. We can conceivably rescue 135,000 lbs of food a month. That means we could reach nearly 2,550 students and their families in Portland, supplying them with a free weekly delivery of groceries. This is critical assistance to families who often have nothing at home to eat. The new space will allow us to continue and expand upon our mission of reducing waste and want.

The Oregon Food Bank surveyed over 4,000 families who received some sort of food assistance in the last year. According to their survey results, 36% of Oregon households with children report cutting or reducing the size of a child’s meals (compared to 30% in 2010). And 77% of households say they worry at least sometimes about how they will get their next meal (compared to 66% in 2010).

Despite many food relief organizations’ efforts, “the food insecurity rate for children in Oregon is above the national average by 29 percent.” Through food assistance programs, 81.7 million pounds of food was donated to families in need last year in Oregon alone. Our work is far from over.
Childhood hunger has lasting detrimental effects on a childes’ development. Children who are food insecure are more likely to:
– require hospitalization (with an average cost of $12,000 per child) and suffer form chronic illness
– be academically behind in school and have trouble focusing
– exhibit behavioral problems, including truancy and tardiness in school
– experience thoughts of suicide and a desire to die

Please help us end the cycle of childhood hunger

Donate through our website or visit our CrowdRise Campaign to help with the fundraising.