Gleanings From The Harvest
Galveston County's Link Between Surplus Food and Hungry People

How would you feel if you only had enough food to eat once a day? Or if you didn't know where your next meal was coming from?

How well would you do on your job if you hadn't eaten for two days?

How well could your children learn if they went to school day after day on an empty stomach?

That's the plight of many people in Galveston County. Hunger is a major problem here. Parents are desperate to get enough food for their children. Older people, many homebound, don't have enough money to buy nourishing food. The working poor are sometimes too proud to ask for public assistance or are making just a bit too much, but not enough, to make ends meet. And what about the single mom who can't qualify for benefits for another week? When you're hungry now, a promise of help later on doesn't fill your stomach.

Where can these people turn?
They could go to church pantries, social service agencies and faith-based charities. But there is never enough food at these distribution centers to meet the needs of all who are desperately in need.

Solving the problem of hunger in Galveston County is not just a matter of getting more food to the needy. It's a matter of getting more food to the organizations that serve the needy.

Small church pantries do a remarkable job of supplying food to those in need. But they can't receive and hold a truckload of milk when it becomes available. Organizations that feed people hot meals can't store fresh and frozen surplus food just because it becomes available. And many agencies don't have the funds to buy discounted food from the Houston Food Bank and similar sources.

The solution is the Galveston County Food Bank, an interfaith community-based organization established solely to receive surplus food from restaurants, grocery stores, institutions that prepare meals, corporations that manufacture food products, food brokers and shippers.

Gleanings stores and re-distributes this food to its members, a network of organizations that have identified and can rapidly deliver this food to the hungry of Galveston County. In this way, a variety of nutritious food items can be made consistently available all year-round to those who feed the needy.