The Greater Boston Food Bank, Inc.

Mission

The Greater Boston Food Bank's mission is to help end hunger in eastern Massachusetts. We feed 83,000 people weekly through our network of more than 600 hunger-relief agencies in 190 communities in the nine counties of eastern Massachusetts: Barnstable, Bristol, Duke, Essex, Middlesex, Nantucket, Plymouth, and Suffolk.

Programs

The Greater Boston Food Bank distributes more than 25 million pounds of food annually to a network of more than 600 community agencies,including food pantries, soup kitchens, homeless shelters, transitional shelters, long-term residences, rehabilitation centers, treatment centers, after-school programs, youth centers, and senior centers. In addition, The Greater Boston Food Bank operates four direct service programs: Kids Cafe is a charitable meal service program that provides kids with nutritious food and related educational activities in safe accessible locations. The Brown Bag program provides families and seniors with supplemental bags of nutritious, healthy groceries once a month. The Perishables program distributes wholesome food that is near its expiration date to Boston Housing Authority developments to help augment the diets of the BHA's low-income residents. Second Helping provides more than 350,000 meals a year by quickly collecting and distributing donations of perishable foods from retailers, restaurants, caterers, hotels, academic institutions, corporate cafeterias, and other food service establishments.