Food Assistance & Distribution Services

Pittsburgh Region

• Allegheny County Department of Human Services: Food Assistance Programs
  Lists government food programs and nonprofit food assistance organizations.
• City of Pittsburgh: Healthy Active Living
  The city's 14 senior community centers provide lunches for persons 60 and over.
• Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank
  Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank is a nonprofit organization that distributes over 1 million pounds of food and grocery products each month to 350 agencies in the 12 county region of Southwestern Pennsylvania. They have a Food Assistance Directory online.
• PA 2-1-1 Southwest
  Pennsylvania 2-1-1 Southwest, the free human service hotline operated by United Way, is professionally staffed 24/7 in Allegheny, Armstrong, Butler, Fayette and Westmoreland counties. Call 211 (or 888-553-5778) for help with human services and community resources.
• Allegheny Valley Association of Churches
  a 32 church member association that serves the community through a food bank, a hospitality network and other services.
• East End Cooperative Ministry (EECM) Hunger Services
  Offers meals on wheels, a food pantry and soup kitchen. The people served are the frail, homebound elderly, the hungry, the homeless, and children and youth in underprivileged neighborhoods.
• Fishes and Loaves Cooperative Ministries Buying Club
  Fishes and Loaves is a cooperative, faith-based ministry whose current project is to make wholesome food available to residents in the Hazelwood area at reasonable prices.
• Just Harvest
  Just Harvest helps people apply for food stamps, file taxes, understand the welfare system, access summer food and other child nutrition programs, and helps if you have problems with the Department of Public Welfare.
• Lutheran Service Society of Western Pennsylvania
  The Lutheran Service Society (LSS) maintains food and nutritional service programs, Meals-On-Wheels programs, and food distribution to low income families.
  • Meals on Wheels
    Through its 78 affiliated kitchens, LSS is the largest single provider of MOW in southwestern Pennsylvania, serving 2.2 million individual meals to over 8,000 recipients each year.
• Pittsburgh Public Schools: Food Services
  Look here for the Application for Free and Reduced Meals. PPS also offers Free Lunch @ Select Schools and Universal Free Breakfast.
• Rainbow Kitchen Community Services
  Provides support for low-income families through programs that address hunger, childcare and job training and placement.
• Salvation Army, Western Pennsylvania Division
  Thousands of families apply to The Salvation Army annually for food, clothing, shelter and financial assistance.

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Pennsylvania

• Pennsylvania Department of Health
  • Women, Infants and Children Program
    A USDA program providing vouchers for designated nutritional foods for women and children at risk, administered by the county health departments.
• Pennsylvania Department of Public Welfare
  • Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP)
    The Pennsylvania Department of Public Welfare provides SNAP (formerly food stamps) for low-income households in Pennsylvania.
• Pennsylvania Hunger Action Center
  Pennsylvania Hunger Action Center, formerly Pennsylvania Coalition for Food and Nutrition, is a non-profit organization working with partners across the Commonwealth to end hunger. Hunger Action's mission focuses on ensuring food security for all Pennsylvanians.

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Web Sites

• Feeding America
  Feeding American is the umbrella organization for the nation’s 200-plus food banks. The number of people served by food banks rose 46 percent from 2006 to 2010. The Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank is a member. You can find foodbanks by zipcode on this site.
• Food Research & Action Center: Federal Food/Nutrition Programs
  The Food Research and Action Center (FRAC) is a national nonprofit organization working to improve public policies and public-private partnerships to eradicate hunger and undernutrition in the United States.
• USDA Food Desert Locator
  In response to a 2009 report to Congress, Access to Affordable and Nutritious Food: Measuring and Understanding Food Deserts and Their Consequences, the US Department of Agriculture has created a mapping tool for identifying food deserts -- low-income communities without ready access to healthy and affordable food.
• USDA Food & Nutrition Service: Nutrition Assistance Programs
  Information on federal programs such as SNAP (formerly Food Stamps), WIC, school breakfast and lunch programs, summer food programs.
  • Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP)
    As of Oct. 1, 2008, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is the new name for the federal Food Stamp Program, reflecting their focus on nutrition and putting healthy food within reach for low income households.
    • Learn how to apply for benefits
  • School Meals
    Including National School Lunch and Breakfast Programs, administered by local school districts.
  • Summer Food Service Program
    The Summer Food Service Program is designed to fill the nutrition gap in the summer but doesn't work well for rural areas. See Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: Food programs hard to sustain in rural areas (7/2/2012).
• FAO: The Right to Food
  The Right to Food is the right of every person to have regular access to sufficient, nutritionally adequate and culturally acceptable food for an active, healthy life. It is the right to feed oneself in dignity, rather than the right to be fed.