proposed plan

Kids Cafe & Summer Feeding Kitchen

America’s Second Harvest of Coastal Georgia currently maintains its Savannah operations from multiple buildings on non-adjacent sites. The existing facilities include 69,170 sq ft of warehouse space, with only two loading docks and a 5,444 sq ft production kitchen.

The proposed $40 million plan consists of a new location which will house our warehouse, offices, volunteer center and commercial kitchen that will double our existing square footage of 74,614 to 145,000 on approximately 20 acres. The new warehouse will be state-of-the-art and include 10 tractor-trailer docks for receiving and additional bays for Kids Cafe trucks and agency pickups.

WAREHOUSE - NEW BUILD

The proposed warehouse will be 91,905 sq ft with an additional 10,000 sq ft for offices and meeting space. The warehouse will include ten loading docks that can accomodate tractor trailers, ultimately increasing our capacity for pick-ups and deliveries.

Volunteer Center

A 23,147 sq ft Volunteer Center will be included in the Hub that will allow for groups to assist us in daily activities such as sorting canned good donations, packing mobile food pantry boxes, school pantry boxes, and backpacks.

Kids Cafe Commercial Kitchen

A 13,480 sq ft commercial kitchen will be included in the Hub space, allowing for nutritious Kids Cafe and Summer Feeding meals to be prepared and packed. This section of the building will include eight truck bays to allow for more efficient loading of meals, agency pickups, and deliveries.

Refrigeration

Coolers and freezers will be included in the Partner Marketplace, Warehouse, and the kitchen. This will increase our capacity to receive and store fresh, perishable, and frozen foods. In turn, we will be able to offer even more fresh produce.

Partnerships Help Cover More Ground

Today, we partner with 237 diverse non-profits through our Partner Markeplace. Shelters, soup kitchens, backpack programs, pantries, and faith-based organizations utilize the food bank to acquire food for their feeding programs. This allows our partners the ability to leverage their funding for other essential programming for their clients.

Providing For Our Aging Neighbors

In 1984, Second Harvest introduced the Brown Bag for the Elderly program in order to provide grocery assistance to seniors who are 60 years of age and older. Many of these seniors are forced to make an impossible choice between food, medicine, and household bills - a choice that no one should ever have to make.

Nourishing Our Children

In 1989, Second Harvest launched Kids Cafe. The program concept was initially created in Savannah in response to two young boys looking for food in the kitchen of a community center. Feeding America adopted the program in 1993 and it has since grown into the third largest nationally recognized childhood hunger initiative. Kids Cafe provides a safe place where children not only receive free, nutritious meals but also tutoring, enrichment and recreational activities.

SCHOOL’S OUT, HUNGER’S NOT!

Our Summer Feeding program debuted in 2009 with just eight sites in Bulloch and Chatham counties. It has since grown to 85 sites in eight counties. This program has consistently expanded to assist more children in more counties that are missing meals during the summer months when school is closed. Our meal capacity more than doubles during the summer as we provide two meals a day - breakfast and lunch or dinner and breakfast. During 2022, we provided over 831,322 nutritious meals to children.

Rural Neighbors Should Not Go Hungry

In 2007, we implemented our Mobile Food Pantry program to augment the efforts of our partner agencies operating in rural communities where hunger relief is limited. As the Covid-19 pandemic hit our service area, we learned to use the same methods of delivery to ease the impact on our community partners while supporting the rapidly rising number of individuals facing food insecurity.

Partnering With Schools

The School Pantry program was introduced as a pilot program in Glynn County in 2021. We partner with school administrators, guidance counselors, nurses, and teachers in order to identify children and families who may be struggling and would benefit from food assistance. These families are provided with a box of non-perishable food that will feed a family of four breakfast and dinner for three days.

In the last two years, we have doubled our food assistance efforts and are touching the lives of more individuals, families, senior citizens, and people with disabilities than ever before – many of whom became food insecure, unemployed, and possibly homeless for the first time.

During the last fiscal year, the food bank proudly provided more than 22.8 million pounds of food which equates to 19 million meals. On average we save roughly $44 million dollars in food costs through our purchasing power and food procurement capabilities. These savings are passed on to our partners so they can assist their clients in other areas of need.

This Capital Campaign will allow Second Harvest to continue to grow with the need in the community and further our mission to end hunger in Coastal Georgia.