Feeding the community, fueling spirit at Houston Food Bank

This essential non-profit organization relies on volunteers for many of its hunger-battling initiatives.

There’s more than peanuts going into the jars at the LDS Peanut Butter Cannery in north Houston, but these extra ingredients aren’t on the label.

Just ask any of the 15 Enbridge public affairs and communications team members who recently volunteered at the cannery to make peanut butter for the Houston Food Bank. They’d tell you that the 6,000 jars they produced that day are also filled with community spirit and teamwork.

Peanut butter is one of the most in-demand items for the Houston Food Bank, which has partnered with the church that operates the cannery to generate 250,000 jars each year for food bank clients. It’s one of many initiatives for which the food bank relies on volunteers – and it’s also one of many initiatives garnering support from Enbridge employees in Houston.

Francesca DeLeon, a senior co-ordinator with Enbridge’s Community Partners and Investment team in Houston, coordinates this support, sending out Enbridge teams of eight to 60 volunteers, two to three times per year. She says these volunteer team-building shifts offer employees “a chance to make an impact throughout the community.”

The Houston Food Bank served more than 800,000 clients in 2013, and chief development officer Amy Ragan says many of those clients in America’s fourth-largest city never dreamed they’d rely on its services.

That’s a sentiment that hits home with Sara Poznanski, a financial analyst with Enbridge. She and several coworkers spent two days at the food bank’s Keegan Kitchen in 2012 and 2013, preparing meals to be distributed across the city. As they worked, Poznanski learned one of the colleagues volunteering that day had received food bank support. “It made volunteering even more special to her because she had used the food bank as a child. It really hit home for us,” says Poznanski.

On any given day, throughout the 18 Texas counties served by the Houston Food Bank, 66,200 people are hungry and can't afford to buy food. To meet that need, the institute provides food and support through a myriad of services, including food pantries, hot meal programs, hampers and programs for kids.

It’s a lot of good work, and it takes an army of people to do it. Last year, the food bank had 15,000 unique volunteers. “We can’t do what we do without volunteers,” says Ragan. “We need that volunteer labor force to feed all the people who need food assistance in our community.”

Tiffany Watson, a Houston-based emergency response communications advisor with Enbridge, says her team got a palpable sense of the impact of their efforts during their day at the peanut butter factory.

“You really feel that you’re creating that jar of peanut butter for someone specific – for the child who is going to have that peanut butter sandwich, for the senior who has something nutritious in their pantry,” she says. “And when you’re volunteering, you’re focused on working together in a coordinated effort to do something good for someone else.”

Watson received another take-away from her shift at the factory – her own jar of the stuff. “Peanut butter that you made with love and dedication to share with someone who needs a little help – it just tastes better.”