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America's Second Harvest--The Nation's Food Bank Network--is a nation-wide food bank network of over 200 food banks that serve every county in the United States as well as Puerto Rico. It purports to be America's largest charitable hunger-relief organization. It is headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. A food bank is a place where food, typically non-perishable goods, are offered to the poor for free or at very low prices. ...
Jump to: navigation, search Chicago, colloquially known as the Second City and the Windy City, is the third-largest city in population in the United States and the largest inland city in the country. ...
History In the late 1960's, John van Hengel, a retired businessman in Phoenix, Arizona began volunteering at a local soup kitchen, and began soliciting food donations for the kitchen. He ended up with far more food than the kitchen could use in its operations. Around this time, he spoke with one of the clients, who told him that she regularly fed her family with discarded items from the grocery store's garbage bins. She told him that the food quality was fine, but that there should be a place where unwanted food could be stored and later accessed by people who needed it, similar to how banks store money. Jump to: navigation, search Phoenix was incorporated as a city on February 5, 1881. ...
A soup kitchen is a place where food is offered to the poor for free or at a reasonably low price. ...
Van Hengel began to actively solicit this unwanted food from grocery stores, local gardens, and nearby produce farms. His effort led to the creation of St. Mary's Food Bank in Phoenix, the nation's first food bank.
In 1976, St. Mary's was given a federal grant to assist in developing food banks across the nation. This effort was formally incorporated into a separate non-profit organization in 1979.
In March 2000, America's Second Harvest merged with Foodchain, at that time the nation's largest food-rescue organization.
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