John
van Hengel set out to change his life and ended up changing the world. After a
divorce and serious injury, he relocated to Arizona and got involved in several
charities. While volunteering at a soup kitchen, a woman told him that she often
got the food to feed her children by going through grocery store garbage cans.
She told him that the food was perfectly good and that, just as there is a bank
to store money, there should be a place to store excess food until people needed
it.
With
this idea as his inspiration, John van Hengel contacted local groceries and bakeries
and in 1967 he set up the St. Mary's Foodbank in Phoenix, Arizona -- the first
food bank.
In
1976 John van Hengel started America's Second Harvest - a national food bank network
that has grown to include more than 200 food banks that donate food to 50,000
agencies which provide food for 23 million Americans.
