Tender Mercies is a meal program of Midwest Food Bank and is making its "packing" debut here in Georgia. It is a low cost, high nutrition meal packet, consisting of chicken seasoned rice and beans fortified with vitamins and protein. Over the past couple of years, Midwest Food Bank has packed millions of these nutritious meals at our facilities in ...

Thanks to funding dollars from Walmart Foundation, Community Foundation of Central IL, and Ameren IL MFB Peoria has a new refrigerated box truck. This truck will replace a well-used, smaller sprinter van used for our daily grocery donation pickups and other refrigerated donations and/or deliveries. Our volunteer box truck drivers tra...

Teenagers these days …  have a heart for service. During the month of April, the Morton Division worked with about 400 teens and grade school students packing Tender Mercies meals and re-packaging food products. Metamora High School students ended a testing day by gathering in the gym and working together to pack a total of 15,000 Tender ...

Two grants were recently awarded to Midwest Food Bank's Backpack Program. Illinois Prairie Community Foundation's gift of $3000 and Kiwanis Bloomington Golden K's gift of $1500 will both help to purchase of a shelf-stable fruit product as a new addition to the program for the 2019-2020 school year.  The Backpack Program provides food for the w...

The Lee County Homeless Coalition recently awarded a $5,000 grant to Midwest Food Bank Florida. It was requested to help offset the cost of fuel and delivery of food donations.  While many food items are donated to MFB, we often have to cover the cost of transporting them to our warehouse. Each year, MFB Florida spends over $125,000 ...

Prior to becoming a volunteer at Midwest Food Bank, "food insecurity" was a foreign term. I wasn't familiar with the concept and certainly hadn't experienced it first-hand. I would quickly come to learn that food insecurity is defined as having limited or uncertain availability of nutritionally adequate food and limited or uncertain ability to acqu...

The family of Midwest Food Bank founder and president, David Kieser, was honored at the McLean County Republican Party Lincoln Reagan Dinner. Held Friday, May 17, the dinner included a presentation by  White House Chef Martin Mongiello, and a silent auction.  Chosen from among eight other nominees, the David Kieser family was one of ...

 After many months of effort, Midwest Food Bank East Africa (Kapu Africa) was able to make a trip to South Sudan to help refugees there. On the weekend of May 3-5, 28 metric tonnes of Tender Mercies, MFB's packaged meal, were distributed. South Sudan, a neighboring country to Kenya, gained independence from the Republic of Sudan in 2011 and is...

Midwest Food Bank is able to alleviate hunger for those in need due to the generous support received in the form of food donations, volunteer hours and dollar contributions. These are the key inputs to the MFB Business Model.  Some of our donors have given non-cash items to MFB. These include cars, stocks, real estate, collectibles, grain...

The Florida division has an exciting opportunity to partner with the United States Post office in the Stamp Out Hunger Campaign. This opportunity allows our Florida Division to receive food donations from the letter carrier's food drive this upcoming Mother's Day weekend. In order to participate, all Fort Myer's residents need to do is load up the ...

Midwest Food Bank is pleased to announce a new corporate staff employee. Dana Williamsen has been chosen as Accounting Director of Midwest Food Bank. As Accounting Director, she is responsible for the oversight of corporate as well as divisional accounting procedures and processes. Dana comes to us from Illinois Central College where she was the Fi...

Midwest Food Bank Indiana and the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) teamed up in an effort to tackle child and family hunger. Active and retired officers and members of the FOP along with their families distributed 300 food boxes provided by MFB in the Fountain Square area of Indianapolis on March 30. The distribution was held to help low-income fami...

Midwest Food Bank Bloomington Normal held their annual Gala Dinner and Auction on Saturday, April 6, 2019. Upon arriving, guests enjoyed appetizers while perusing and bidding on silent auction items.  Upon being seated for the dinner, Gala attendees heard a first-hand account of needs in their community. Megan Whitecotton from Danvers Com...

Tender Mercies is a low-cost, highly nutritious meal consisting of rice, pre-cooked pinto beans, fortified chicken seasoning and a soy protein. Here are a number of recent developments with our Tender Mercies program: New logo, new look! Tender Mercies has a new logo and bag design. Please have a look in the photo below. Labels with the new logo ar...

Midwest Food Bank donors come in all shapes and sizes (and amounts!). We appreciate the heart each one has for those struggling with food insecurity. Donated funds, great and small, are treated with respect and what we hope is good stewardship.​There is a unique subset of donors we'd like to take a moment to highlight. These are generous folks who ...

"For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all."  -I Corinthians 4:17 In a catastrophic turn of events, Raber Packing Company of Peoria burned to the ground in November 2018. The owners have taken this momentary trouble and produced an eternal glory, by turning i...

Midwest Food Bank Peoria staff and volunteers are settling into newly renovated offices and community room. The bright and open-aired space is refreshing. As with any remodel project, a few finishing touches are still needed.  Phase two of our renovation is in full-swing. Our old office space is being demolished to expand the MF...

Food, fuel and water shortages continue in Haiti. This has been exacerbated by recent unrest, protest and road blockages. In the past 18 months, food prices have increased by more than 100%. A praise out of this otherwise desperate time is that Midwest Food Bank Haiti had a surplus inventory of 350 boxes of Tender Mercies (63,000 servings) at ...

On February 22 & 23, 2019, over 300 volunteers from Eastview Christian Church participated in a Tender Mercies Packing event called Pack-a-Pallet, at Midwest Food Bank's warehouse in Normal. The Friday night and Saturday day event was in partnership with Midwest Food Bank, Haitian Christian Ministries, and Eastview Church. Packing meals is one ...

At Midwest Food Bank East Africa, we are happy to receive any food donations we can pass along. We are especially delighted to be able to distribute quality, nutritious vegetables. For this reason, MFB values the partnership with Rozzika Gardens Ltd. Since opening in 2014, we have received fresh vegetables from the faithful donor. Rozzika Gardens w...