The Emergency Food Assistance Program (EFAP) provides funding, technical assistance, and information to community and tribal programs that deliver emergency food services to hungry people. The program was developed in 1985 to assist food banks and distribution centers in meeting the emergency food needs of Washington families. In 1991 the Tribal Food Voucher Program was created to help tribes in rural areas and where there were no existing food banks.

Recession Impacts

Recent data indicates that EFAP-funded food banks served an unprecedented number of people in 2009, providing service to over 600,000 people a month, nearly 40 percent of whom were children. In 2009 there were over 1 million more visits to food banks than in 2008.

Services

EFAP Provides funding for:

• Over 320 food banks and distribution centers to pay for staff, operational expenses, equipment, and food.
• 32 tribes who issue emergency food vouchers.
• The purchase of food for clients with special dietary needs, such as diabetes, HIV/AIDS, cancer, heart disease, those who are pregnant, or those who have cultural preferences.
• Training food bank staff and volunteers across the state so that they can more appropriately provide for the needs of their special dietary needs clients.

Results

From July 2008 - June 2009:
• 1.45 million people visited food banks an average of five times in 2009, resulting in more than 7.2 million visits.Over 115,000 clients received special dietary food to meet medical or cultural needs.
• State-funded distribution centers provided 41 million pounds of food to food banks.
• Food banks used those 41 million pounds to supplement the other 75 million pounds of food they gathered from other sources to distribute 116 million pounds of food to hungry people.
• Tribes provided food vouchers to over 7,900 of their members, 40 percent of whom were children and 12 percent of whom were senior citizens. Their number of visits totaled more than 16,000.

Why do we need emergency food assistance?

• Food banks are providing services to more of the working poor than previously reported. The University of Washington estimates that one in three children in the state live in families with incomes too low to afford basic necessities.
• In many areas food banks have reported they are seeing more people than ever before who have never had to use the emergency food system.  Some tell of families who use to donate to the food bank now having to access their services.  These are people who suddenly found themselves out of work, uninsured and without the means to cover all of their families’ needs.

For More Information

Contact Susan Eichrodt, Program Manager, (360) 725-2853.