Background/History

More than 40 million Americans go hungry, including women, children, the unemployed, the working poor, and homeless people.

And yet, plenty of food is available. The USDA estimates more than 25% of the food grown in the U.S. is never made available for people to eat. Much of this food is left in the fields after harvest; much more is deemed excess or unmarketable and dumped in landfills.

Prior to the common sense approach of the Society of St. Andrew and our 30,000 volunteers annually, millions of pounds of good, nutritious healthy fruits and vegetables were being thrown away in the landfill while millions of hungry Americans were going without the nutritious fresh produce.

Since 1983, the Society of St. Andrew has gleaned and salvaged over 649 million pounds of fresh fruits and vegetables at the farm level, which has resulted in over 1.95 billion servings of food being placed on the dinner plates of our hungry brothers and sisters.

The good work of the Society of St. Andrew has kept God's abundance of good, fresh, nutritious food out of the landfill and on the dinner plates of our hungry brothers and sisters.

Goals & Objectives

SoSA's goals:
a) Through the Potato Project, salvage 15 million pounds of produce to provide approximately 45 million servings annually.
b). To deliver 600,000 pounds of seed potatoes to the poor of Appalachia to enable them to grow approximately 4,720 pounds of potatoes to meet their food needs over the winter.
c). To glean 16 million pounds of fresh fruits and vegetables annually from farms across the contiguous U.S. for distribution nationwide.
d). To host 11 Harvest of Hope events with 600 participants annually.
e). To keep our overhead at less than 5%. Currently, our overhead is at 4.1%.
f). To help the reader grown spiritually, continue providing outstanding devotion materials: Advent, Lent, Vacation Bible School.
g). To host a Harvest of Hope event in Tennessee.

Activities Plan

Organize volunteer groups to glean.
Keep strong relationships with current farmers and acquire new farmers who are willing to let us glean their fields.
Publicize early to let folks know about the opportunity to attend one of SoSA's Harvest of Hope events. Continue evaluating (by staff and participants) importance and relevance of this ministry.
Continue to be good stewards of money, resources, and time so that our overhead continues to stay below 5%.
Enlist strong writers and faithful staff to put together superior devotion materials.
Find a location and resources in the state of Tennessee that will adequately accommodate our Harvesters of Hope.