Society of St. Andrew Marks 30 Years of Hunger Ministry

This year the Society of St. Andrew marks the 30th anniversary of its founding. There have been many milestones and successes along the way. However, over the years, whenever co-founder Ken Horne was asked what SoSA’s goals were, he would immediately reply, “to work ourselves right out of a job – and that will happen when there is no more hunger in America.”

We may not be out of a job yet, but there is no doubt that during these 30 years SoSA has dramatically raised the national level of awareness of domestic hunger. SoSA has been recognized by Congress, the United States Department of Agriculture, state legislatures, other national hunger organizations, and many church denominations for its contribution to fighting hunger in America.

Indeed, before SoSA came on the scene and began gleaning and shipping large quantities of excess fresh produce to critical feeding agencies around the nation, this type of hunger-relief work was simply not being done. Perfectly good food was going to waste to the tune of 96 billion pounds a year. SoSA demonstrated that fresh food salvage could be done efficiently and economically, and our example has spawned many “copy cat” programs over the years. These, taken as a whole and combined with our present efforts, now deliver over a quarter of a billion pounds of produce each year to agencies that feed the poor! Yet there is so much more that still needs to be done. Join SoSA in continuing the fight against hunger until we work ourselves out of a job!

A few highlights and milestones from the past 30 years:

• Start of SoSA’s Potato Project in 1983 – thebeginning of bulk fresh food salvage in the UnitedStates.• 1.7 billion servings of nutritious food have beenprovided to the nation’s hungry.
• United States Department of Agriculture presentedSoSA with its Hero of Food Recovery & GleaningAward at its first National Summit on FoodRecovery & Gleaning in 1997.
• The United Methodist Church adopted Resolution #4093 during its 2008 General Conference commendingthe “Society of St. Andrew as a partnerorganization with the United Methodist Church inthe alleviation of hunger in the United States”.
• SoSA opened regional offices in North Carolina,Florida, Texas, Alabama, Mississippi, andits Western Headquarters in Kansas City, Missouri.

Please continue to pray for our ministry and those we serve, go gleaning with us, and contribute financially to our ministry.