North Texas Food Bank Paper Example

What is the population they serve? What are the clientele and the services they provide?

The North Texas Food Bank is a non-profit agency that serves a population of 835,000 people living with North Texans, who are faced with the challenges of getting meals for their sustenance. The agency operates by distributing donations, purchasing and preparing food through the network of about 1,000 feeding programs and 262 Partner Agencies within the 13 North Texas counties. The agency provides the annual supply of 70 million meals to "food insecure" areas. The NTFB offer services to the nutritional needs of the families, children and the old people through advocacy, education as well as strategic partnerships. The population that the agency serves is described as the ones who lack reliable access to nutritious meals. The objective of the agency is to eradicate the gap between the 70 million meals, it offers annually to the present demand of 92 million meals. The common racial and ethnic groups in the areas that NTFB serves are the white, blacks or African Americans, and Latino or Hispanic. Within the food bank's service area, the black or African Americans of the clients were 31 percent, and 29 percent of them were Latino or Hispanic, 30 percent were children under the age of 18, and the seniors aged above 60 years accumulated to 13 percent (Mills et al., 2014).

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What is the Vision and Mission Statement of the agency you are volunteering for?

The vision of North Texas Food Bank is to have is to have a hunger-free and healthy North Texas. While its mission; "To close the hunger gap in North Texas by providing access to nutritious food. Our mission is to revolutionize philanthropy by providing information that advances transparency, enables users to make better decisions, and encourages charitable giving" (Simnacher, 2018).

Do they have any specific goal, objectives, or measurable outcomes they monitor?

So far, North Texas Food Bank has risen to over $40 million and its goal for this year is to reach above $55 million (Simnacher, 2018). Since NTFB is getting closer towards closing the hunger gap, there is still more effort needed to attain the agency's 10-year goal of offering 92 million nutritious meals every year by the time it gets 2025 (ntfb.org, 2018)

Who coordinates the food and nutritional services or programs provided? Are they a Registered Dietitian, or something else? What is their background? (Ex: Nurse, Home Economist, Social Worker, etc.)

The coordinators of food and nutrition services are made up of both full me employees and volunteers. For the volunteers come from different career backgrounds provided that the role that they intend to play will be imperative for the organization towards achievements of their goals, vision, and mission. In general, both the volunteers and the full-time employees have their career background as nutritionists, nurse, and social workers.

Summarize your interview with the individual.

I was privileged to have an opportunity to interview the NTFB CEO, Trisha Cunningham. In the interview, we discussed t essential issues that directly influence the operation of the agency. In summary, the CEO stated that the agency is working with the other 244 agencies, 58% of them being faith-based, while 42 percent are non-faith based agencies. The CEO further stated that North Texas Food Bank is working towards attaining its goal of serving 92 million needy populations, it is partnering with nearly 610 programs, 10 food-related welfare programs, together with 108 meal programs, 206 grocery programs, and the rest 285 other nonfood programs. The agency is raising money to fund the upgrade of infrastructure as well as the continuing operations to feed people.

Summarize your volunteer experience.

The different department in the agency works effectively towards the mission, vision, and goals of the agency by ensuring that there is efficient functionality. The management of the agency is caring for the volunteers, employees, donors and the clients that it serves. It is a noble thing to be compassionate and generous to serve the community that it is needed. The agency has firm, outstanding number f programs that are aimed at reaching the community that is in need of nutrition education as well as nutritious food supply. The agency uses proper and polite channels when approaching the donors, who in return provide abundant support to sustain NTFB to attain its goal to serve its hungry demand of 92 million people. The working environment is professional, and ethical employment codes are always adhered to in the workplace. Communication within the departments follows a given protocol to avoid conflict of interest, commotion or confusion when working. NTFB gets into the field to collect the data of the population before making the budgetary estimation of the resources needed in fulfilling the nutritional desire of the people in North Texas.

What services did you provide? Be specific.

NTFB is a big agency, so my experience was confined on social services volunteer. I always made long trips into the population that NTFB serves to get the information on the nutrition trends, demands and the progress made in feeding the ones in need. The information I collected from the field, I relayed to my Assistance where they discussed and get the reflection of what is happening on the grounds, to determine their ability to meet the objectives of the agency.

References

Mills, G., Weinfield, N., Borger, C., Gearing, M., Macaluso, T., & Mendonca, S. et al. (2014). Feeding America. Washington, DC 20037: Urban Institute and Westat. Retrieved from http://help.feedingamerica.org/HungerInAmerica/FB72_VA_Richmond_report.pdf

ntfb.org (2018). Retrieved from https://www.ntfb.org/document.doc?id=297Simnacher, J. (2018). North Texas Food Bank. America feeds its hungry | Philanthropy | Dallas News. Retrieved from https://www.dallasnews.com/business/philanthropy/2017/02/17/north-texas-food-bank-trying-raise-55-million-aim-shaking-america-feeds-hungry