The Snohomish Community Food Bank
It’s a Friday morning and the line of people waiting to receive food at the Snohomish Community Food Bank wraps around the building. The rain is coming down, and everyone is anxious to come inside to get dry and load up a cart of groceries to help feed themselves and their families. “When I go home Friday with food, my kids are thrilled and say ‘wow, we would not be having fruit [because it’s so expensive] without the food bank,’” says Susie, a client at the food bank in Snohomish. “We’ve always been on the giving end. We’ve always had the money to give, but with the housing crisis—my husband’s business is in housing—three years ago, we lost almost everything. My husband has been working 70 hours a week, and we’re fighting foreclosure. The only thing we have is our house.”
The Snohomish Community Food Bank, a Food Lifeline member agency, has been feeding local community members in need for more than 25 years. “My favorite thing about this job is working with a great team of volunteers toward a common goal of feeding the clients,” says Elizabeth Grant, the executive director of the food bank. “We were up in donations last year. I’ve never felt the camaraderie as I do here in Snohomish.”
The food bank collects and distributes food and provides social services on a weekly basis to people living within the community who need it. The food bank relies greatly on the generosity of its more than 100 local volunteers. “We’d be stuck without the volunteers,” Grant says. “They’re dedicated and provide about 1,200 hours, on average, of service each month.”
“This is my lifeline, I love it,” says Pat (pictured), a volunteer at the Snohomish Community Food Bank. “I have so much compassion. I get to talk to the people and it’s great. We just got a sack of donations this morning. Someone just dropped in and people do that all the time here.”
"I look forward to coming down here. It's just like seeing friends," says Janet, a senior client at the food bank.