Why is a one-year milestone important for the Queen Anne Food Bank? Back in November 2011, the Food Bank was forced to close due to lack of funding – but thanks to the generosity of Sacred Heart’s parish country-wide and the Queen Anne community, the Queen Anne Food Bank reopened in February of last year, kicking off a year of food drives, a sack lunch program, and a well-stocked food bank for neighbors in need.

Fast-forward to today and the Queen Anne Food Bank at Sacred Heart is celebrating its first anniversary with a Pancake Breakfast on Wednesday, February 27. The breakfast kicks off at 8am in the basement of the Waldorf High School on the Sacred Heart Campus. The breakfast celebrates the QAFB clients, donors, volunteers and other community supporters – it’s a way to show appreciation for all of the efforts that contributed to the first year of the new Queen Anne Food Bank.

Queen Anne Food Bank
Fill the Truck Food Drive

The QAFB has invited all of its volunteers, benefactors and clients to the breakfast, and they want to spread the word to the broader community – all are who have helped in the past year or are interested in what the QAFB does, are welcome to attend. Just RSVP via email or at 206.216.4102.

If you’re wondering what exactly the QAFB does, it hosts two hunger programs, the Sack Lunch Program (Monday-Friday mornings), and the Food Bank (every Thursday afternoon). The QAFB serves the Belltown, Downtown and Queen Anne neighborhoods, distributing 500 sack lunches each week – with an anniversary total of 44,000 sandwiches!

Queen Anne Food Bank volunteers

One full-time QAFB staffer works alongside 56 active volunteers who range in age from 4 to 89 years old, and put in just as hours as four full-timers.  Nineteen Seattle schools have partnered with QAFB, and food donations come from community organizations such as the Queen Anne Farmers’ Market, Metropolitan Market, QFC, Safeway, Starbucks, Ten Mercer, Kaspar’s Catering, Pike Brewing Company, Caffe Ladro and Four Seasons.

Happy Anniversary to the Queen Anne Food Bank & many thanks to the volunteers, schools, and organizations that have made the first year such a success!

If you’re looking for a new volunteer opportunity that helps our community, the Queen Anne Food Bank needs volunteers for its sack lunch program and afternoon greeter staffing.

The QAFB runs a sack lunch program, and it needs volunteers to make sandwiches for these lunches. QAFB sandwich makers are on a crew of 2-3 volunteers that put together sandwiches for the daily sack lunch program that serves over 100 lunches per day. Right now, they need volunteers for the Wednesday morning crew (6:30am-8am).

If that’s too early in the day for you, but you’d still like to chip in, the QAFB also needs volunteers to staff the QAFB on Thursday afternoons (1:45pm-4pm), ensuring a welcoming environment for those in need.

Contact Florence McCafferty via email or at 206.216.4102 for more information or to volunteer your time.

St. Alphonsus Parish School is located in Ballard, but Queen Anne owes them a thank you for helping out the Queen Anne Food Bank this holiday season. Students from St. Alphonsus collected non-perishable food items throughout the month of November to donate to the Queen Anne Food Bank. The school chose to help out QAFB because it recently re-opened after closing its doors last Spring due to lack of support and the school wanted to make sure their donations went to local recipients.

The food drive began November 1st and ended at the school’s Thanksgiving Luncheon. The students’ total donations amounted to 1,520 food items delivered just in time for Thanksgiving meals.

Thank you, St. Alphonsus Parish School & Happy Thanksgiving!

The holiday season is upon us, and the Queen Anne Food Bank needs your help! The Food Bank is looking for local businesses, organizations and groups interested in running food and/or personal items drives. The Food Bank will work with you to get you up and running by helping with key steps of the planning process.

The process of organizing a food drive starts with bringing together a group of interested people, then deciding on dates to start and end the drive, as well as a date to deliver the food. You can request that the Food Bank make a flyer for you, or better yet, channel your inner artist and design one of your own.

The next step? Get the word out about your drive and what items you need people to donate. At this step in the process, Queen Anne View can help you – if you run a food/goods drive, post the info in the Forum, and a blog post further publicizing all local Queen Anne food drives will follow.

Once the drive starts, the majority of the work is over and you can reap the rewards of knowing you’ve helped those in need this holiday season and beyond. Plus, it’ll be a lot of fun – check out this picture from a “fill the truck” food drive this past July:

If you, your organization, or your business is interested in running a Food Bank drive, please get in touch with the Queen Anne Food Bank outreach coordinator Florence McCafferty at florence@qafb.org or 206.216.4102.