By Julia Olson
Assistant Editor
The Jewish Federation of Cincinnati’s Helping on Chai women’s philanthropy program will center on the Freestore Foodbank on Thursday, April 17, from 1:00 – 3:30 p.m. The Helping on Chai group meets once a month to do charitable work and community outreach.
The Freestore Foodbank works to provide food for people in the Tristate area who struggle with food insecurity. The organization estates that over 250,000 people in the region are food insecure. To combat this, the Freestore Foodbank connects food insecure folks with programs that can ensure consistent resources and ways to foster self-sufficiency. The Foodbank has over 600 community partners in the Tristate area. According to its website, the Freestore Foodbank has provided over 47 million meals this fiscal year, including 13 million pounds of produce. The Foodbank’s programs also include accessible lunches for schoolchildren, formula for infants through the Kind Program, food delivery boxes for seniors, as well as other social services like Medicaid enrollments, transportation assistance, SNAP applications and more.
Volunteers with the JFC Helping on Chai program will be creating Power Packs, packages with over a dozen food items that are sent home with school children every weekend, and Senior Boxes, which provide shelf stable foods for members of the community who are 60 years or age or older. Helping on Chai volunteers will also be sorting food donations that are delivered across the Tristate area to different community partners. Volunteers will get a taste of the day to day operations the Freestore Foodbank. Registration information and more details about Helping on Chai and the Freestore Foodbank can be found on the Jewish Federation of Cincinnati’s website.
