Jamie Kendall
Hunger Relief Nonprofit
For more than 16 years, Jamie Kendall has worked in the food-banking sector to address hunger for those in her community. Four years ago, she joined the Palm Beach County Food Bank to help the growing organization — it was just nine years old at the time — meet the increasing need for food security as well as help grow the food bank’s programs to reach and make an impact in hunger relief.
“I found that working with the social services and especially food insecurity — which is such a big problem that a lot of people just don’t even realize exists — was extremely gratifying to me personally, to know I’m making a difference in helping those in need,” Kendall says.
The Palm Beach County Food Bank continues to grow in response to that need. Pre-COVID-19, the Food Bank was distributing about 4 million pounds of food each year. Last year, that number increased to 15.4 million pounds of food.
“It’s an incredible jump in the number of people that we’re able to serve in the community,” Kendall says.
The Palm Beach County Food Bank partners with almost 200 agencies to collect, deliver and distribute food throughout the county. Food is distributed to soup kitchens, homeless shelters, church pantry programs, schools and other programs that help in the fight against food insecurity.
This year, the food bank also launched a new asset to serve the community: a commercial kitchen where they can prepare up to 10,000 hot, nutritious meals for children and seniors. In addition, they will perform culinary training with students in their workforce-training program.
“We see cohorts of students that come through with some kind of employment barrier, and we want to give them the skill set needed,” Kendall says. “These basic skill sets remove them from the line, so to speak, of needing food assistance and give them a skill set to become employed with workable wages here in our community.”
For Kendall, it’s just another asset in the fight to end hunger. “I’m really passionate about what I do,” she says. “I love all the different clients we serve from the kids to the seniors to the working-class families that just need that little bit of assistance.”
Palm Beach County Food Bank, 701 Boutwell Road, Ste. A-2, Lake Worth Beach, 561-670-2518, pbcfoodbank.org
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