Mission in Action – Tippecanoe County

Numbers Represent our 2021 Fiscal year; October 1, 2020 to September 30 2021.

750

Children Served Weekly
by the Backpack Program

3.3M

Pounds of Food Provided
by the Mobile Pantry Program

56k

Meals Served to Children by the
Summer Food Service Program

4M

Pounds of Food Distributed
by the Agency Partner Program

69k

Pounds of Food Provided by
the Senior Grocery Program

378

SNAP Applications Completed
by the Staff for Clients

Newsletter Summer 2023

When Judy Doremire passed away in 2011, her husband of 41 years, Harold Doremire, wanted to continue her mission to alleviate food insecurity. Harold’s long-time friend, Steve Qualkinbush, approached him with a project to busy his mind. Recounting his introduction to Food Finders, Harold states, “[Steve] came to me one day, and he said, ‘I’ve got just the thing for you, Harold.’” With the help of family and friends, Harold has since sponsored eight mobile pantries at Klondike Elementary in Judy’s memory. Read More  Watch Harold’s Story

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Newsletter Winter 2022

When Katy Bunder retires at the end of 2022, her 14 years at the helm of Food Finders Food Bank will have been book-ended by two national crises – the Great Recession and the COVID pandemic. She took over on August 25, 2008, and three weeks later Lehman Brothers declared bankruptcy, and the country was faced with its biggest financial crisis in decades and, since the spring of 2020, the nation has been in the throes of varying levels of recovery from a world-wide health crisis unmatched in the past 100 years. Fortunately for the 16 Indiana counties served by Food Finders, Katy has bravely taken on these challenges and others and has led her staff in finding innovative and effective ways to get food to those who need it. She leaves behind an organization that has been transformed under her leadership. We sat down with Katy to ask her about her 14 years with Food Finders. Read More

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Newsletter Fall 2022

Evetta Mahlum simply doesn’t stop moving. She starts almost every day with a walk – sometimes up to six miles in a single morning. And she keeps rolling after that. “It’s good for me to walk. I de-stress and get my thoughts organized,” she said. As the manager of the Wesley’s Table Food Pantry, Evetta has a lot to keep organized. The pantry serves hundreds of people in the Kankakee, Illinois area every weekend. Evetta has been the pantry manager for the last few years. But it wasn’t always that way. “Five years ago, my husband was in a car accident. We went from an income to absolutely no paycheck practically overnight. It was devastating,” she remembers. “The accident turned our world upside down. We didn’t know where our next meal was coming from.”  Read More

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Newsletter Summer 2022

Making a Difference In her role as Vice Provost for Finance and Strategic Initiatives at Purdue, Cherise Hall spends her days making a difference by working on efforts which will help translate the university’s academic goals and visions into practice while, at the same time, finding ways to fund those efforts. In her own way, she does much the same thing for Food Finders Food Bank. Cherise, along with her two sons, Dylan and David, makes a difference by volunteering at our Fresh Market pantry — and also by supporting Food Finders with recurring gifts through our 365 Society. “I am just in awe of the new Fresh Market facility and the vision of the whole Food Finders team for reaching not only this county, but all the surrounding counties,” Read More

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Newsletter Winter 2021

Celebrating 40 Years of Fighting Hunger and giving Hope In the summer of 1981, members of the local AFL-CIO Labor Council sponsored a meeting to gauge support for a food bank based in Lafayette. They were inspired to do so by a growing food bank movement following the success of the nation’s first food bank, St. Mary’s in Phoenix, Arizona, which was founded just 13 years earlier. Several area churches and community organizations attended the meeting and offered enthusiastic support for the idea. Three months later, after a lot of hard work by its dedicated and community-minded founders, “Mid-North Indiana Food Finders, Inc.” began its operations on October 16, 1981 – World Food Day – in a small, two-car garage between Earl Avenue and Sagamore Parkway. The following year, the organization moved to a former grocery store near Elston and Old Romney Road Read More

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Food Finders

Reports and
Financials

Reports and Financials

Food Finders Food Bank’s publications library features the most up-to-date information about our efforts to fight hunger in North Central Indiana. We are widely viewed as experts and thought leaders for our research and communication efforts that give voice to the causes and conditions of hunger. And we continually publish brochures, newsletters and reports to help our donors, elected officials, partner agencies and the general public stay up-to-date on important issues and topics related to hunger and poverty in our region.