Emerge Stronger with the Oregon Food Bank (podcast)

Welcome to another installment of the Oregon Brewery Running Series Podcast; Inspiring Oregonians to Be Active, Have Fun, and Give Back. We host family-friendly, 5K fun runs that start and end at some of Oregon’s best breweries.

REGISTER FOR OUR NEXT RUN HERE!

As you know, our 5K events are temporarily on hold due to the COVID-19 pandemic. We hope everyone is staying safe out there, both physically and mentally. Drew and I, he’s my co-founder and business partner if you’re new here, are really, and I mean really missing the social connection aspect of our events. This year we were planning to have an event about every other weekend, and the fact that we haven’t had one since March 7, well that’s been hard for both of us.

So, in April we hosted our first virtual distance challenge and are doing it again here in May. In short, it’s a way to stay connected socially to our community, while providing a little more encouragement and incentive for people to stay active, and also raise some money for a few great local non-profits.

Today on the podcast, we’re chatting with Kyle Hummel, the Corporate and Community Relations Officer with the Oregon Food Bank. He joined us for our Zoom call this past Saturday and did a great job explaining not only what the Oregon Food Bank is all about, but also painting a picture about the current need during the COVID crisis.

I will let him explain all of that, but please note there are links both in the show notes and on our website if you’d like to make a special donation to the Oregon Food Bank. We have a goal to raise $1,000 above and beyond what we’ve already committed to through the May Challenge.

So please enjoy this podcast with Kyle Hummel from the Oregon Food Bank. 

About The Oregon Food Bank

When Drew and I were thinking of a non-profit to partner with for our May challenge, we knew we wanted an organization that has a strong track record in the community. We also knew we wanted to partner with an organization that wasn’t just doing stuff for COVID relief, but would be around for awhile. It was also important that it was an organization that was meeting very immediate and necessary needs.

This is how we found the Oregon Food Bank and the more we get to know what they’re doing, the more we like them. Here is a little bit from their website:

We’re probably not what you expect when you think of a food bank. In Oregon, we do things differently.

We started off like most food banks did back in 1988. That’s when Interagency Food Bank and Oregon Food Share merged to become Oregon Food Bank, and we distributed USDA Commodity Supplemental Food to over 200 hunger-relief agencies.

Today, Oregon Food Bank collects food from farmers, manufacturers, wholesalers, retailers, individuals and government sources. We distribute that food through a Statewide Network of 21 Regional Food Banks and approximately 1,200 food assistance sites serving all of Oregon and Clark County, Washington.

It seems like a big job, and it is. We absolutely couldn’t do it alone. But, distributing food is not the entire job. Like we said – we do things differently in Oregon.

As you probably know, the COVID pandemi has closed most locations where people experience food insecutiry typically rely on for meals (schools, community centers, churches, etc). This has created a big gap in the way kids, seniors, and other at risk populations find food. To respond to this unprescidented need, the Oregon Food Bank has issued the #EmergeStronger Challenge. This is intended to not only meet the current need, but also emerge strong once we go back to “normal” whatever that may look like.

Join our Fundraising Campaign!

With the help of the Oregon Food Bank, we’ve created this special giving page to raise fund to go directly to their #EmergeStronger Challenge. We have some members of our brewery running comunity who have generously offerend to match all of our donations up to $1,500! Take a look and if you are able, contribute something to the campaing.