Tuesday, June 01, 2010
Food for Thought—A Look at Food Banks in the U.S.A. Part 3:
John van Hengel : The Founder of the First Food Bank
Who Started Food Banks and How?
The third part in this series introduces how food banking started in the United States and later to spread to the world.
John van Hengel, founder of first food bank in the world (Photo courtesy of St. Mary’s Food Bank Alliance)
The very first food bank in the world was started in 1967, in Arizona, by John van Hengel. When John learned that a local supermarket was throwing away large amounts of food every day, he talked to the store manager into donating the wasted food to a local soup kitchen that he was involved with. Soon, the amount of donated food grew and the soup kitchen had a surplus of food. Seeing this, John was inspired to create a system of collecting and saving food, much the same way a bank collects and saves money. This was the birth of the very first food bank in the world. This food bank, now operating as St. Mary’s Food Bank Alliance, continues to distribute food to people with low-income in Arizona.
Ten years after John started the first food bank in the world, more and more organizations started food banking activities. John became a consultant on food banking to many of these organizations. As a nationwide network to serve these food banks across the nation, America’s Second Harvest was organized in 1976. Later renamed to Feeding America, its mission is “providing food to Americans living with hunger.”
John explaining the mission of America’s Second Harvest (Photo courtesy of St. Mary’s Food Bank Alliance)
John then started consulting organizations in Canada and Europe about food banking, and established International Food Banking Services, Inc., in 1986. The firm changed its name to Global Foodbanking Network (GFN) in 2006.
GFN supports local food banks in 18 countries in locations including South America and Africa. Second Harvest Japan has been a member of GFN as a representative of Japan since 2007.¹
2HJ Executive Director Charles McJilton sitting with John at the America’s Second Harvest annual meeting in Hollywood in September 2003
John’s message (see the following paragraph) is written on the board (Photo courtesy of St. Mary’s Food Bank Alliance)
John passed away in 2005, but the spirit of his message that “The poor we will always have among us, but why the hungry?” lives on here in Japan, with us at Second Harvest Japan.
We also welcome your comments and thoughts. Mail us at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) and follow us on Twitter for the latest news about food banking in Japan (@2HJ_en in English, @2ndharvestjapan in Japanese).
References
All quotation and data come from St. Mary’s Food Bank Alliance’s website unless otherwise specified.
¹ Global Foodbanking Network’s website.
If you like this story, you might also enjoy:
Office Manager Masahiro Otake’s U.S. Food Bank Travelogue Vol. 1
Food for Thought—Part 2: “Stamp Out Hunger”—The Largest Single-Day Food Drive in the U.S.
2HJ’s new video - Thank you very much for your support!
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