Second Harvest Foodbank of the Mahoning Valley

The Second Harvest Food Bank of the Mahoning Valley's mission is to solicit, store, and distribute food to hunger-relief organizations in Columbiana, Mahoning, and Trumbull counties, and to provide education and advocacy. We believe that no one should go hungry, and we are dedicated to building a community that makes food accessible to all people. We also educate the community about hunger in our tri-county service area and serve as advocates for those who are in need. Through our own efforts and stories picked up by the local media, we ensure that people living in the Valley are aware of the problem of hunger in our community.

We are dedicated to building a community in which no one will ever face hunger.

Goal One: To work toward expanding equitable access to nutritious food to anyone who needs food in our tri-county service area.

Goal Two: To ensure that the Food Bank has the financial resources and infrastructure to accomplish its mission.

Goal Three: To strengthen partnerships and collaborations with local and national businesses and organizations, community partners, and member agencies to feed hungry people.

The Executive Director participates in annual Feeding America conferences, represents the Food Bank at the Ohio Association of Foodbanks, and participates in local advocacy on behalf of our member agencies with community leaders and elected officials. The management staff is provided with Feeding America resources to learn best practices of food banking, such as developing food solicitation skills and resource development skills. The Director of Development, who assists the ED, is also an active member of the Association of Fundraising Professionals.

In 2022, the Food Bank ensured that the agencies and programs could fulfill over 15,000 requests for food assistance each week and distributed over 9.5 million pounds of food, which included 2.8 million pounds of fresh fruits and vegetables. COVID programs which had provided extra help to many have ended, causing an increase in visitors to our member agency's food distributions. Steadily increasing costs of food, utilities, housing, medicine, etc. are adding more traffic to our pantries which saw an additional 28% new visitors. Many of that percentage is senior citizens whose already tight budgets are being stretched beyond what they can afford. Second Harvest Food Bank is continually creating more programs to help ease these worries for our hungry friends and neighbors in the Mahoning Valley. We are collaborating on some programs to bring food boxes to some facilities and hospitals as a prescription to promote eating more nutritious foods proving that food is medicine. We are also looking at ways to enhance our senior box program.