Do you know how much St. Mary's helps Northern AZ?
St Mary’s food bank serves 250,000 meals everyday across Arizona and parts of California. But to understand how far St. Mary’s has come, first you need to understand where they came from.
In 1967 a man named John Van Hengel noticed that grocery stores disposed of food that had damaged packaging or was near expiration. Armed with this knowledge, Van Hengel met with grocery store managers across the valley, persuading them to donate edible but unsalable food to St. Vincent De Paul. Soon van Hengel was receiving more food than one dining room could use.
“The poor we shall always have with us but why the hungry?”- John Van Hengel
After establishing the first “food bank” Hengel collected and distributed more than 250,000 pounds of food to 36 local agencies.
Last year St. Mary’s distributed 4,282,680 pounds of food just in Northern Arizona from January 2015 to April 2015. That’s just Northern Arizona!
St Mary’s helps out 9 agencies just here in Flagstaff Arizona. They help Flagstaff Family, Sunshine Rescue/ Hope Cottage, YCWA, Big Brothers Big Sisters, Northland Family, Sharon Manor, Think Jesus, Coconino County Senior Center and Coconino County Office.
You are probably wondering how does St. Mary’s help out so many people. St. Mary’s gets about 85% of its donations from grassroots donations. St. Mary’s has amazed me by how much the common person donates to their cause. What impressed me the most was that 95-96% of a dollar goes to feeding people. St Mary’s truly believes in helping other people and we are proud to support them.
I love how involved St Mary’s is in our local Flagstaff community. They also support summer meal programs for kids at the YMCA and the Boys and Girls Club as well as the emergency food boxes.
We have been sponsoring the You’ve been Served fundraiser for 2 years now. The You’ve Been Served is put on by our local legal community of Flagstaff and benefits St. Mary’s Food Bank.
We want to thank St. Mary’s Food Bank for all that they do for our local Flagstaff community.
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