John
van Hengel set out to change his life and ended up changing the world. 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 need it. With this idea as inspiration, John
van Hengel created the world's first food bank. He borrowed money from his church,
St. Mary's Basilica, which also loaned him one of their buildings to use. Then
he contacted local groceries and bakeries and in 1967 the St. Mary's Foodbank
in Phoenix, Arizona opened its doors. Across the nation and around the world,
others were inspired by this idea to create local community food banks. 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.
