Our Programs

Food 4 Kids Backpack Program provides a weekly backpack full of food to children at risk of going hungry over the weekend when federal free or reduced-price meals are unavailable. We currently pack over 1,900 bags of food weekly and distributed them to 36 elementary schools in the Tulsa area: Academy, Addams, Alcott, Anderson, Briarglen, Bryant, Burroughs, Celia Clinton, Cherokee, Chouteau, Cooper, Disney, Emerson, Eugene Field, Greeley, Hawthorne, Houston, Jackson, Kendall-Whittier, KIPP, Mark Twain, Marshall, Mayo, McClure, McKinley, Mitchell, Newcomer Internationa, Park, Remington, Roosevelt, Rosa Parks, Roy Clark, Sandburg, Sequoyah, Sperry, Springdale and William Penn.

An additional 11 communities in our 24-county service area participate in the program. They receive their food from the Food Bank, but the program is administered by our various partner agencies. These include the Agape Mission in Bartlesville, Boulevard Christian Church in Muskogee, Boys & Girls Clubs in Gore, Pryor and Sequoyah County, Bristow Presbyterian Church, the First Baptist Churches in Antlers and Okay, Grand Avenue United Methodist Church in McAlester, Leonard United Methodist Church, and Westside Freewill Baptist Church in Checotah.

• Most Needed Items
• Food 4 Kids Kit

For more information, contact Cathy Elliott at celliott@cfbeo.org.

Value-Added Processing Program helps extend the shelf life of perishable food by processing it in the Food Bank's Culinary Center into a form that can be frozen. A recent example of Value-Added Processing is a truckload of donated tomatoes that was turned into pasta sauce, then frozen and later distributed to the Food Bank's Partner Programs. For more information, contact Jonathan Haring at jharing@cfbeo.org.

Prepared and Perishable Food Program distributes highly-valued food to the hungry, such as fresh meat, dairy products, produce and already-prepared meals that would otherwise be discarded. Last fiscal year, a number of local retail grocers, restaurants and cafeterias donated almost 500,000 pounds of prepared and perishable food, a 153 percent increase over 2005. For more information, contact Ken Bacon at kbacon@cfbeo.org.

Produce Program supplies fresh, nutritious produce to our Partner Programs. Last year local and national food donors provided over one million pounds of produce. For more information, contact Ken Bacon at kbacon@cfbeo.org.

Product Recovery Center involves hundreds of volunteers who spend thousands of hours in our reclamation room sorting and boxing food donated by retail stores and through food drives. Last year over one million pounds of non-perishable food was processed. For more information, contact Kate Pelizzoni at kpelizzoni@cfbeo.org.

Rural Delivery Service allows our Partner Programs to make better use of their resources. Since half of our Partner Programs are more than 35 miles away from our Tulsa warehouse, we deliver their food to 12 drop-off sites located in Muskogee, McAlester, Tahlequah, Broken Bow, Hugo, Antlers, Poteau, Vinita, Sallisaw, Grove, Wagoner and Bartlesville.

Staple Food Program provides food to our Partner Programs that is not typically donated by food donors or through food drives, such as peanut butter, canned protein and cereal. During fiscal year 2006 we purchased over 400,000 pounds of food in large quantities at a price well below retail.

Plant a Row for the Hungry is a nationwide program that was started by the Garden Writers Association of America in 1995. It encourages farmers and backyard gardeners alike to plant a little extra every year and donate the abundance to the hungry. Last year the Food Bank received over 3000 pounds of fresh produce as part of this program. For more information, contact Ken Bacon at kbacon@cfbeo.org.

USDA Commodities Program distributes commodities to our Partner Programs through a contract with the Oklahoma Department of Human Services. During the last fiscal year, we distributed over two million pounds of commodities to the hungry in Eastern Oklahoma.

Disaster Relief Program helps us respond quickly during a disaster. During the January 2007 ice storm, we served as a staging area for FEMA. In addition, we purchased and distributed 4,000 pre-assembled boxes of food, enough to feed a family of four for five to seven days.