In matching golf caps and smiles, employees of Augusta National Golf Club have tirelessly cooked meals, packed boxes, tended to raised produce beds, and extended a comforting hand of food and hope to our neighbors in need throughout their annual month of service. This outstanding team has volunteered across our soup kitchen, urban farm, and sorting and packing facilities over the past 3 years, as part of the Augusta National Cares program. Thanks to their hard work, we have been able to provide healthy meals for countless children, seniors, and families in our 25-county service area. At our Augusta [...]

Angela Rhea, 2nd grade teacher at Blythe Elementary School, holds a bag full of kid-friendly food. As the BackPack Program Coordinator, she ensures children facing food insecurity receive a bag of food for the weekend. Tucked away in Angela Rhea’s 2nd grade classroom, ziplock bags filled with shelf-stable milk, juice, snacks, pop-tab entrées, and more waited to be packed discreetly into children’s backpacks for the weekend. These packs of kid-friendly food are from Golden Harvest Food Bank’s BackPack Program, a volunteer-powered initiative to provide healthy food for students who rely on school meals during the week. “Their [...]

Donors like you help Cindy and her granddaughter, age 5, access the healthy food they need to thrive. Cindy takes care of five people at home, including raising her 5-year-old granddaughter. She loves getting out in the community and meeting new people. But when her family began facing medical and financial challenges, Cindy had to find resources to feed her loved ones. GAP Ministries, one of our partner agencies serving downtown Augusta, has helped Cindy get through a difficult time. “My husband was diagnosed with cancer, and we went from a hefty income to literally nothing,” she [...]

Gayla smiles as NJROTC volunteers pack groceries into cars. She was one of hundreds of neighbors to pick up fresh produce at our distribution. Hundreds of neighbors waited patiently in the car line outside of our Augusta warehouse. Our Food Bank had just received a large shipment of fresh produce, and teams of JROTC students joined alongside our staff to pack trunks full of groceries. For Gayla, the distribution was a huge help. Like many of our neighbors, she has been experiencing lower SNAP benefits and inflated food prices at the grocery store. “It’s going to help [...]

Volunteers from Nutrien helped sort and package tomatoes to be distributed directly to families. After a few years of planning and executing, we are finally welcoming in our community members to join alongside us at our new Volunteer Center! Thank you for being patient as we expanded our facilities to better serve our neighbors in need. The new space allows us to increase the number of people necessary to help advance our mission of feeding those in need. We can now also better support our agency partners, who stand on the frontlines of combating food insecurity across [...]

Every November, employees of Equity Residential, a multi-family real estate investment trust, unite for their Community Giving Month. Locally, the accounting office dedicates their time to volunteering with Golden Harvest sorting and packing food items at our volunteer center, and preparing and serving meals at The Master’s Table soup kitchen. Over the past few years, the organization has focused on issues surrounding food insecurity, and have spent 200 hours during the month supporting Golden Harvest’s efforts of ending hunger in its service area. “No matter where you volunteer or what method you volunteer with Golden Harvest, I definitely feel [...]

Project Life staff and volunteers gather in the clothing sorting area, where donated clothes are processed. The organization serves guests 3 days a week. Project Life, an organization that has provided hope to thousands of neighbors since 1997, has moved into a new space: a former car dealership, complete with a thriving food pantry and clothing closet. The new facility provides more space for the food pantry and behind-the-scenes operations, allowing Project Life volunteers to serve more guests. “We continued to see more and more people each week, each year, and we just felt it was time [...]

Whether sorting and packing groceries at the Faith Food Factory or serving lunch at The Master’s Table soup kitchen, for 10 years, dedicated volunteer Alvin Williams has been working hard to put food on the table for our neighbors in need. “I’m from a very poor family in New York, and we never had much,” he said. “But God took my family and I all over the world, and it was time for me to give back.” Mr. Williams is a team player and is always willing to take on any task necessary to help get the job done. [...]

Gloria Simmons, food pantry manager at Hancock Helping Hands, is dedicated to helping her neighbors in Sparta, GA. Bustling with volunteers packing food boxes, greeting guests in line, and loading cars with groceries, Hancock Helping Hands has been helping neighbors in Sparta, GA, for over 28 years. Food pantry manager Gloria Simmons said the organization has been serving an unprecedented number of families lately, with about 600 visitors per month. “In the last few years, it has grown tremendously,” said Gloria. With just one small IGA in town, access to healthy meals is a challenge for many Sparta [...]

Golden Harvest Food Bank staff alongside local and state elected officials during Feeding The Future roundtable discussion. At a time when the number of people visiting Golden Harvest Food Bank for food resources continues to rise, elected officials are drafting legislation to govern the food programs that we use to help feed our neighbors. Every five years, Congress reauthorizes the farm bill, the centerpiece of federal legislation that provides healthy, nutritious food for those across the country facing food insecurity. Programs that the Food Bank depends on to help alleviate hunger in our community, like SNAP (Supplemental [...]