12 Organizations Helping to Win The Fight Against Hunger in America

As most of you know, That’s Caring didn’t start out as a company hoping to solve hunger problems in the United States.  We actually began as an eco-friendly, socially-responsible gift basket company producing “green” gift baskets from “green” sources way back before “green” was the new thing.  We still use a few socially-responsible elements in our products, of course (Equal Exchange fair-trade chocolates, OneHope Wine and Bright Endeavors’ soy candles in recycled wine bottles, for example), but we now have a cause that’s even nearer and dearer to our hearts (and, after how much we loved the eco-friendly one, we didn’t even know that was possible).

That’s Caring has joined the ranks of several other organizations worldwide to help fight the damaging effects of childhood hunger (see our The Cause tab on our website for more info on just what hunger does to a developing child).  Every gift box purchased from our line of high-end gifts donates supplies for weekend bags which are distributed to children in the Chicago area—the fourth highest hunger rate in the USA—living in food-insecure households.

In case this cause means as much to you as it does to us, we wanted to show you a list of organizations helping to win the fight on hunger one purchase and donation at a time, nationally and worldwide.

2. Rise Against Hunger has a vision to stop world hunger. The organization supplies meals packaged by volunteers and including dehydrated, vitamin and mineral-dense soy and vegetable products along with seasonings. The nonperishable items are collected and donated to food pantries and shelters in the Raleigh area, keeping countless food-insecure area citizens from being hungry or malnourished.

3. Feeding America is the number one charity in America when it comes to fighting hunger with more than 2 billion pounds of donated food and grocery products annually. They feed the hungry in America through a nationwide network of more than 200 nationwide (and in the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico) member food banks that provide assistance to more than 25 million low-income individuals struggling with hunger in the United States.  Nine million of those are children, and nearly three million are seniors.

4. The Hunger Project is an organization that partners with local government bodies to make sure that men and women are empowered to end their own hunger. With most of their work occurring in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, this group helps people become self-reliant, empowered, and effective when it comes to providing nutrition for themselves as well as their families, friends, and home villages.

5. Action Against Hunger: a company that strives to end world hunger, saving lives by eliminating hunger and hunger issues through preventing, detecting, and treating malnutrition. They are especially concerned with emergency situations of conflict, war, natural disaster, sustainability and crisis response, all aided through expertise in food security, water and sanitation, health, advocacy, and nutrition.

6. Heifer International, with its goal of helping people to become empowered as a means of getting themselves out of their own poverty, focuses its donations in two ways: through livestock—such as cows, chickens, goats, and more—or by funding programs that donate livestock. This sustainable organization trains families in more than 125 countries to improve their quality of life and become self-reliant, both of which help project participants, their families and friends, and their home areas become hunger secure.

7. City Harvest works to help the more than 1.7 million New York citizens currently living in poverty. The organization helps more than a million people each year fight off hunger by rescuing over 126,000 pounds of food per day, which is then donating to more than 500 community programs. With a goal to grow operations addressing the demand for emergency food, City Harvest is well on its way to becoming the go-to organization in the New York city limits and beyond.

8. Kids Against Hunger works hard to feed families and children worldwide. The organization’s mission states that they aim to reduce the number of hungry children in the US and throughout the rest of the world, shipping meals to starving children and families in over 60 countries and partnering with humanitarian organizations to help end world  hunger for good.

9. Bread for the World Institute is a faith-based organization that educates advocacy network, opinion leaders, policy makers and the public about hunger in the US and worldwide. They generate studies on hunger, provide educational resources, and help to empower people with information so that they can affect real progress and real change toward ending hunger worldwide.

10. Based out of California, Freedom from Hunger has been around since 1946. The organization helps bring sustainable self-help solutions to aid against chronic hunger, combining microfinance with health and education services to allow families with little to no means of income achieve food security.

11. Loaves & Fishes sets its sights on helping food-insecure families feed themselves and their dependents for a week at a time through donations of a week’s worth of nutritious groceries. A nonprofit, nondenominational organization, Loaves & Fishes was on the efforts of a church in the late 1970’s that responded to a growing hunger problem in North Carolina, and has since expanded to a nationwide movement that provides the hungry with necessary foods.

12. Food for the Hungry seeks to end ALL forms of human poverty by going to the hard places and walking with the world’s most vulnerable people. They partner with community leaders and families in over 20 countries across the globe to lift the burden of extreme poverty by providing life-changing resources such as clean water, medical aid, food, equal educational opportunities to girls and boys, and vocational training.