Feeding America West Michigan Food Bank, formerly Second Harvest Gleaners Food Bank of West Michigan, aims to make emergency food assistance available to all who need it in West Michigan and the Upper Peninsula. By working with partner agencies in local communities, we aim in particular to increase the amount of fresh produce available throughout our service area.

1. Emergency Food Assistance: • Reclaim and distribute surplus food through a network of local hunger-relief agencies. We recognize that our food system produces more food than the market demands and that reclaiming this surplus is an opportunity to reduce food insecurity and waste at the same time. • Connect remote and sparsely populated regions to the Feeding America West Michigan network. A partnership with our Food Bank enables hunger-relief agencies to make their dollar go 10 times further than it would at retail food outlets. • Aggressively pursue new food donors. The State of Michigan has the second most diverse agriculture in the country and provides opportunities for many new partnerships. 2. Increasing Access to Fresh Produce: • Increase donations of fresh produce, which is critical to proper nutrition and often difficult for low-income people to acquire. • Expand the reach of our Mobile Food Pantry program. Mobile Food Pantries bring fresh produce, dairy, and baked goods to churches, community centers, and schools where access to healthy food is often limited. While we are now running Mobile Pantry distributions in much of our service area, our goal is to one day make this efficient source of nutritious food available in all of the 40 counties we serve.

1. Emergency Food Assistance:Feeding America West Michigan is the largest nonprofit hunger-relief organization in West Michigan and the Upper Peninsula. For more than 30 years, we have reclaimed and distributed surplus food in our region, and we now serve 40 Michigan counties. As a donor-supported organization with an effective staff and more than 3,800 volunteers each year, we are able to provide four meals for every dollar we receive. Our history, reach, and efficiency put us in the best position to address hunger on a large scale in our region. 2. Increasing Access to Fresh Produce: Our food sourcing team cultivates relationships with growers, retailers, and processors across the state and focuses primarily on acquiring fresh produce. As a member of the Food Bank Council of Michigan, Feeding America West Michigan has access to the Michigan Agricultural Surplus System (MASS), a statewide program that routes millions of pounds of produce to food banks each year. The Mobile Food Pantry model for distributing fresh food directly to people in need was pioneered at our Food Bank in 1998. This distribution model now accounts for one third of our total food distribution each year and has been adopted by more than 100 food banks across the country.

1. Emergency Food Assistance: Food insecurity in West Michigan and the Upper Peninsula has been elevated since the recession. Michigan as a whole is facing an unemployment rate higher than the national average, and communities in the Upper Peninsula, where jobs are scarce and hunger-relief resources are scarcer, have been particularly damaged by hunger. Our challenge is to connect Michigan's abundance of surplus food to those who need it, even in the most remote parts of our state. Feeding America West Michigan uses two major indices to mark our progress: the national Feeding America study Map the Meal Gap, and Feeding America's County-Level Compliance Indicator. Map the Meal Gap is an annual study that provides food insecurity data at national, state, and county levels and provides an overview of need in our service area. The County-Level Compliance Indicator, released quarterly, compares our distribution to a national standard for minimum expected pounds per person in poverty in a given geographic area (PPIP). Counties must distribute at least one half of the median distribution for all counties in the country to make the grade, and as a member of Feeding America, we are required to strive for annual progress in all underserved counties. In order to supply all the food necessary to meet the need, Feeding America West Michigan's food sourcing team aims to form relationships with 50 new food donors each year. 2. Increasing Access to Fresh Produce:In 2015, we were able to distribute over 9 million pounds of fresh produce. We are hoping to continue to increase that amount each year. Mobile Food Pantries are available in only a portion of our 40-county service area. We hope to expand the reach of this program into Northern Michigan and the Upper Peninsula, where rates of food insecurity tend to be higher and where fresh produce is much harder to access. We will know if we have been successful when we transition from pilot programs coordinated directly by the Food Bank to distributions funded and staffed by community-based agencies themselves.

1. Emergency Food Assistance:In 2015, Feeding America West Michigan reached an all-time high for annual food distribution: 27. 6 million pounds. This food provided the equivalent of 22 million meals. Part of this increase is due to the establishment of a new department to address food insecurity in northern Michigan and the Upper Peninsula, a chronically under-resourced region with rates of food insecurity that tend to be higher than in other counties in the state. We have forged new connections with existing hunger-relief agencies and hosted Mobile Food Pantry distributions at these agencies. Feeding America West Michigan has around 360 food donors annually. The search for new food donors continues, along with our effort to increase donations from existing partners. 2. Increasing Access to Fresh Produce: Feeding America West Michigan's food sourcing team has grown from a subcategory of development into its own department of food-sourcing specialists, one of whom is focused exclusively on seeking out donations of fresh produce in Michigan.