SHARE – Philadelphia’s Largest Community Food Resource
In addition to running the largest food co-op in the Mid-Atlantic region, SHARE also supports and supplies 550 Philadelphia County food cupboards. These 550 cupboards are largely volunteer run and are housed in social service agencies, religious institutions, community centers and other such organizations. To broaden the variety of fresh produce and frozen foods cupboards can supply to clients, SHARE also rescues commercial refrigerator and freezer units and installs them at cupboards. SHARE serves the most food cupboards of any agency in the county doing this work because, unlike some other suppliers, SHARE does not charge cupboards a “membership” fee to receive food from SHARE. Each cupboard distributes three days worth of food, depending upon family size, to persons and households at no more than 150 percent of the federal poverty guidelines.
Although originally intended as an emergency stopgap, the cupboard system has increasingly become a part of normal life in Philadelphia where 25 percent of the general population lives at or below the poverty line and one-third of all city school children are living in poverty. Polls show that most food recipients visit more than one cupboard a month every month of the year. Last year over 120,233 households including 119,084 children, 138,991 adults and 34,693 seniors, received food at cupboards supplied by SHARE.
To supply cupboards, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania annually entrusts SHARE with some three million dollars in funding, of which all but a mere eight percent must be spent on food. In addition, SHARE also receives food supplied by the federal government through The Emergency Food Access Program (TEFAP).
Rounding out government support, SHARE also receives:
- gifts-in-kind from food industry sources;
- grants from foundations to cover additional purchases and overhead (such as the cost of maintaining a warehouse, vehicles, cold storage and packaging);
- corporate gifts from businesses;
- donations from many, many individuals who support SHARE’s mission; and
- 2,000 volunteer hours a month contributed by individuals and groups who compile compliance data for reporting to the government, load pallets in the warehouse, and sort, bag and deliver food.
(For a complete list in each category, click on the bold links above)
It is donors, funders and volunteers who truly put the “Community” into SHARE’s designation as a Community Food Resource!
