What is a food bank?
A food bank is an organization that collects donated or surplus foodstuffs and distributes them free or at low cost to programs or organizations serving people in need.
THE FIRST EVER RECORDED FOOD BANK IN HUMAN HISTORY
The first ever food bank (although it was not so called) ever recorded in human history was started by God Almighty. God opened up the store house of heaven to feed the children of Israel when they complained You have brought us out into this wilderness to kill the whole assembly with hunger (Exodus 16:3). Then the Lord said to Moses, Behold, I will rain bread from heaven for you. And the people shall go out and gather a certain quota everyday (Exodus 16:4). God fed them this food later called Manna (Exodus 16:31). God would feed the children of Israel every day and they ate manna forty years, until they came to an inhabited land; they ate manna until they came to the border of the land of Canaan (Exodus 16:35).
A SHORT HISTORY OF FOOD BANK IN AMERICA
A gentleman by the name of John Van Hengel was volunteering to serve dinner with St. Vincent DePaul, in 1967. Hengel would encounter a needy mother who told him that the soup kitchen and grocery dumpsters were the only way she was able to feed her children. John Van Hengel thought of setting up a place where individuals and businesses could deposit their excess money and food for an onward use, thus the idea to start the world’s first food bank was born. Hengel approached his local parish St. Mary’s Basilica with his vision and they supported him with a start-up money of $3,000 and an abandoned building. In honor of his church’s role in helping his vision, Van Hengel named his vision, St. Mary’s Food Bank. This was how the first food bank in America started, from Arizona. (http://www.firstfoodbank.org/learn-more/our-history).
FROM ST. MARY’S FOOD BANK IN 1967, TO FEEDING AMERICA IN PRESENT TIME
With the success of St. Mary’s Food Bank which was started by John Van Hengel in Phoenix, Arizona, 18 more cities across America would go ahead to set up their own food banks by 1977. With this increase, Hengel established a national organization for food bank which he called, Second Harvest in 1979. The organization later changed its name to Feeding America in 2008. Today, Feeding America has a network of 200 food banks across the country in combating hunger problem across America. (http://www.feedingamerica.org/about-us/about-feeding-america/our-history/).
