Nonprofits Fighting Hunger in Our Communities

During times of great need, like now, it's even more important that we address food insecurity in our community.  A big part of this is supporting our future farmers, especially in agricultural areas like Skagit and Whatcom.  We wanted to shine the spotlight on a few great nonprofits who are helping to prevent hunger in our communities.

Viva Farms is a farm incubator in Skagit county, which provides aspiring and limited-resource farmers with training on organic farming methods, access to low-cost land and equipment for rental.  They provide a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) box to make it easy to support the farmers and get fresh produce to consumers!

Sustainable Connections provides beginning farmer training, runs a farmer internship, and incubator program for local farmers in Whatcom County.  They also founded the Eat Local First Campaign and the Whatcom County Farm Tour.  Both Viva Farms and Sustainable Connections initiatives help support the long-term sustainability of agriculture in our communities.

We also need to get the food from the farms to the food banks and other food programs such as Meals on Wheels and senior delivered meals.

The Skagit Food Distribution Center is a cold food storage and pantry warehouse that allows farmers, food pantries, and hot meal programs to effectively work as partners and streamline services to save time and money.  They have the volunteers to transport the food from the farms and process it so the local food banks can distribute it.  The Bellingham Food Bank serves as the hunger relief hub for Whatcom county.  They work with many of the Whatcom County food banks to fight hunger and with local farmers to get local produce to those food banks and into the hands of families in need.

Our local food banks are the backbone of the effort to feed hungry people in our community.  We support many food banks including Helping Hands Food Bank, Bellingham Food Bank, Neighbors in Need, Ferndale Food Bank, the Skagit Gleaners and more!

We support these nonprofits through volunteering, donations, sponsorships, and employee-led North Coast Cares donations.  It's a community effort to address the challenge of food insecurity.  This year we're thankful for these amazing organizations.