Food Bank Dream Comes True

Today was the friends and family opening of the new Raleigh Headquarters of the Food Bank of Central and Eastern NC. It was a long term dream come true for the board and staff who have been trying to get this done for years.  
The real dream is that we end hunger in our state. With that in mind the new 108,000 square foot building is being called the “hunger solutions center.” We are not just tying to give food to people who don’t have food, but we are working on ways to end the cycle of poverty that keeps people from being able to provide food for themselves and their families.  
In our new building not only do we have giant freezer and coolers to keep fresh meat, produce and dairy. We have a clean room so we can repackage bulk foods. We have a teaching kitchen so we can train people how to cook real food as well as two third of an acre garden plots for teaching people how to grow food. We have a huge community space where partner agencies can use conference and training rooms. And the best space for volunteers to help us sort food.  
We dreamed big and thanks to my friends on our board we have done what seemed impossible. The campaign to pay for this building is called So All May Eat. We have quietly raised $9.1 million dollars so far. Now is the time to tell the world about our campaign and get the last bit of money we need to help our community.
Tonight as the staff, their families and both old and current board members toured the new building we were astonished at how perfectly it turned out. The offices are nicer than anything the Food Bank has ever had thanks to a generous donation by Kimley-Horn and my board chair predecessor Barry Barber who gave us all their old office furniture and cubicles because they were moving offices. It may have been “used” but it looked new and beautiful to us.
The original building had once been a department store thirty years ago, then it went way down market and was an indoor flea market, with individual booths built inside. It took real vision to see that it could be renovated into a perfect Food Bank. Tonight I joked with my fellow board members that if we could end hunger we could “flip this Food Bank” and sell the newly renovated building for more than we have in it.  
It was a big job, especially given that the staff not only had to work on the renovations they also simultaneously had the biggest year in Food Bank history distributing almost 65 million pounds of food. A shout out to President and CEO Peter Werbicki and Operations VP Charlie Hale who did double duty managing this project and their day jobs. I am enormously proud that I get to work with these selfless people. To reward them now we have hurricane Mathew relief that is causing us to need all the new space we have as well as still using our old building until it closes.
If you ever want a tour of what a state of the art Food Bank is, I am happy to give you one. Of course if you are interested in helping the Food Bank with a gift I will run over and get it from you. The Food Bank is the central hub that over 800 feeding agencies depends on to get food to feed people who need it. Now doing that good deed will be a more pleasurable experience.