Second Harvest Food Bank of Metrolina History
Second Harvest Food Bank of Metrolina was founded in 1981, as a project of the Charlotte Area Fund. The organization became autonomous in January 1983, and was originally incorporated as Metrolina Food Bank. Within 15 months, the Food Bank was able to qualify for membership in Feeding America, the national food bank network.
Feeding America is recognized as the nation's largest hunger relief organization, comprised of more than 200 food banks and food rescue programs across the United States.
In the last several years, the Food Bank has added several new programs. The Catawba Branch opened in March 2006 and serves Catawba, Burke and Lincoln County agencies. The Dallas Branch opened in January 2008 and serves Gaston, Cleveland, Rutherford, Lincoln and Cherokee, SC counties. The Spartanburg Branch opened in 2010 and serves Spartanburg, Union and Cherokee counties in South Carolina.
There are 40 Kids Café sites in 11 different counties serving tens of thousands of children each week. We operate 167 Backpack Programs in 16 counties that provide children with backpacks full of nutritious foods on weekends and holidays when school meals and Kids Café meals are not available. Each year the Mobile Pantry Program conducts almost 500 mobile pantries which carry an average of 9,000 pounds of food per trip into our most rural areas.
Our Second Helping Program provides boxes full of staple foods each month to homebound seniors in Cabarrus, Lincoln, Montgomery, Stanly and Union counties in North Carolina, and Lancaster, Union and York counties in South Carolina.
Over 6 million pounds of food are saved annually through Community Food Rescue. CFR serves Mecklenburg and the immediately surrounding area through the Second Harvest Food Bank main warehouse and through a branch site in Davidson, NC.