Washington Food Coalition

Mission

The Washington Food Coalition actively educates and networks with organizations that strive to alleviate hunger throughout Washington.

Description

Individually we, as direct service hunger relief agencies, have limited resources, staff, and time. As a coalition, we work together to leverage our knowledge and experiences into building stronger programs and practices that can most effectively respond to hunger as it happens in each of our communities. When we as local food banks, pantries and meal programs tap into this supportive network of peers, we discover and utilize a ready source for staff training, an experienced sounding board for ideas and challenges, a library of programming models that is ever evolving, all while ensuring a go-to source to learn all the basics about running a successful community based program to keep our neighbors fed.

We are an active learning community that offers support, training, and a shared voice.
•We foster a peer-to-peer learning community that continually creates and updates a library of resources and a network of experience and knowledge to help hunger relief agencies be the best they can be.
•We convene an annual 3-day statewide conference with 25-30 workshop sessions on topics that range from basic skills and how-to of running an effective community-based hunger relief organization, to emerging and innovative programs and program models for maximum impact.
•We travel and meet people where they are in their communities to provide support and get a well-rounded local perspective of the challenges faced, and responses to hunger that are happening around the state.
•We organize and convene people from across the state to provide stakeholder feedback on nutrition programs administered by the Washington State Department of Agriculture that hunger relief agencies rely on to help keep their communities fed.

Recognition

Our peer elected board of directors come from every part of the state, and from organizations large and small, urban and rural. They are embedded in and know the front lines of hunger relief work intimately and are leaders in their districts. Collectively, we are a strong united voice for the 1 in 6 Washingtonians we serve.