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Toluwani Ola

Junior Alexis Moats works alongside of another volunteer to load a car with groceries.

Hope Distributed Food Bank located behind the First Church of Nazarene in Harrisonburg is a food pantry that has been in operation for almost two decades. Jeff Wilhelm is the executive director of Hope Distributed.

“Hope [Food Bank] was created in 2004. It started out as a literal closet outside of the church, but then it moved to the double wide trailer you see out in the front. The main building that we are in right now was built in 2018,” Wilhelm said. 

Wilhelm has been in charge of the food bank for two years and is one of the three paid staff that currently work there. The purpose of Hope is to be a place where needy families can come to receive a month’s worth of supplies needed to sustain them.

“Our mission is to provide food, clothing and furniture to the needy families in the area in a respectful and dignified way, “ Wilhelm said.

Not only do they provide a balanced array of food for needy families and individuals, but they also give out clothing, furniture and other necessities needed to help live a comfortable and safe life. 

“We have a free clothing store and a free furniture store. The clothing store is open on the first, second and third Saturday of every month as well as the fourth Thursday. As far as the furniture goes, [we provide it] as needed. People just call us, for example, if there was a family that had a fire or a flood. But lately, we have seen a lot of women who have left abusive husbands or boyfriends with their kids who just pack up a bookbag and take off. [They] find somewhere to stay and call us. Then, we will come in and give them all of the furniture they need,” Wilhelm said.

Also, Hope Distributed partners with local animal shelters and animal care stores to provide pet food free of cost.

Hope Distributed serves many families on their food distribution days which occur every Thursday. Through the hard work and organization of their facilities, they are able to output a large amount of food to feed the community.

“In a month, we are feeding about a thousand families. I can tell you that in 2020, we gave out about 3.1 million pounds of food [and] 30,000 articles of clothing, and [we] furnished the homes of 40 families in the area,” Wilhelm said.

However, this food as well as the other resources they provide do not fall from the sky. In order to acquire enough food to satisfy the needs of the community, Hope has formed many connections with other organizations and businesses from across the valley.

“What we do is that we get food from the Blue Ridge Valley Food Bank out in Verona, and we also have partnerships with all the Walmarts, Food Lions, Krogers, Aldi’s, Martins’, and Targets between here and Waynesboro,” Wilhelm said

Hope Distributed only has 3 paid workers currently at their facilities. In order to operate at the scale do, they have a method that has sustained them for several years.

“Our staff of three people will go out, pick up the food and come back, and we, along with our team of volunteers, will go and unload it onto the racks or in the freezer or fridge. We have teams that come in on Mondays and Wednesdays that have specific tasks they do. One team will sort through all of the produce and put it in bags, [and] the other team will sort through all of the meat and put them in bags,” Wilhelm said. “On Wednesdays, we have teams that come in and prepare for the food pantries and distribution days. They make boxes that will be distributed the next night. We have over 180 volunteers total that are registered alone, and we would not be able to do anything without our volunteers.”

To Wilhelm, the food bank is much more than just a job. It allows him to express himself and gratuity for the helping hands that were present in his life by giving back to his community. 

“Ever since I moved to Harrisonburg, I’ve worked for non-profit organizations. I was at the Boys and Girls club out in Rockingham County for a while [where] I taught for a couple of years,” Wilhelm said. “Really, my biggest reason for being here is that I grew up in a broken family. [ I grew up in] a single parent family [where I] never met my father and my mom was a teenage mother. So what a lot of these people are going through, I’ve lived that life. I’ve been there. When this opportunity arose, I knew that this was something that I would do and would love every second of it.”