Capital Area Food Bank



The Capital Area Food Bank is the largest non-profit food bank in the Washington, D.C. area and a member of America's Second Harvest. In addition to serving the area with food, it also provides nutritional education to the local community. As a result, Washingtonian magazine named it one of the twenty best charities in the region. The Capital Area Food Bank, like most food banks, operates with the assistance of volunteers from the area; annually over 12,000 donate their time to help sort food, teach classes, and perform other tasks for the food bank. The Capital Area Food Bank also works with other organizations in the area dedicated to providing food to residents from Washington, D.C., Northern Virginia, and Montgomery and Prince George's Counties in Maryland.

History
The Capital Area Food Bank was founded on January 15, 1980 to coincide with Martin Luther King, Jr.'s fifty-first birthday. Prior to that time, the United States government's Food Stamp Program had been the city's primary source of assisting hungry residents. However, cutbacks in the Food Stamp Program planned for the early 1980s led to the food bank's inception by two local organizations, the United Planning Organization and the Interfaith Conference of Metropolitan Washington. In its first year of operation, the food bank managed to offer food to almost one hundred organizations and deliver 1,540 pounds (700 kilograms) of food each month. Throughout the rest of the 1980s, the Capital Area Food Bank to proceeded to prosper as it partnered with nearby corporations, such as The Washington Post. In 1991, the Capital Area Food Bank opened a new warehouse in the Brookland neighborhood in northeast Washington, D.C.. The new 48,000-square-foot warehouse is more than three times as large as the food bank's original 14,000-square-foot warehouse and continues to serve the Capital Area Food Bank today. In 1998, the food bank opening another warehouse, in Lorton, Virginia, which has since served the needs of residents of Northern Virginia.

In 1981, just over one million pounds (460,000 kilograms) were processed by the Capital Area Food Bank. Less than twenty-five years later, in 2005, the food bank outputs over 20 million pounds (9 million kilograms) of food to over 275,000 people, making it the largest food bank in the area.

Political importance
Due to its central location near the seat of the United States government, the Capital Area Food Bank has been a popular stop for politicians. Three consecutive U.S. presidents &mdash; George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush &mdash; have visited the food bank.

In 1990, sitting president George H.W. Bush banned broccoli from the White House and Air Force One, stating that "I'm President of the United States. And I'm not going to eat any more broccoli." In response to the ban, an estimated ten tons of broccoli were sent to the White House, which Barbara Bush in turn donated to the Capital Area Food Bank. That same year, the president visited the food bank and incorporated it into his Points of Light Foundation.

On Inauguration Day, 1993, more than thirty-five thousand cans, including one from Tipper Gore, were collected for the Capital Area Food Bank. In 1999, President Bill Clinton visited the food bank to volunteer and George W. Bush duplicated that act in 2002. Likewise, less than two weeks before Super Bowl XXXVIII in 2004, U.S. First Lady Laura Bush visited the Capital Area Food Bank to encourage Americans to participate in charitable activities. Other politicians have shown their support for the food bank by donating or otherwise promoting the cause of the Capital Area Food Bank. In 2005, for example, Maryland and Virginia Congressmen Chris Van Hollen, Steny Hoyer, Jim Moran, Frank Wolf, and Albert Wynn were successful in requesting US$1.3 million in federal funds for the food bank.