The Capital Area Food Bank recently completed another round of our premier workshop series for emergency feeding programs, Top Shelf.
Over 60 representatives from 25 CAFB partner agencies across the Washington, DC metro area gathered on October 19th and November 2nd at Jericho City of Praise in Landover, MD for two full days of training. Topics included program development, volunteer management, promoting healthy food, managing nonprofit finances, wrap around services, safe food handling and distribution methods.
Through Top Shelf, we are fostering the use of best practices across our network in order to increase the number of meals available to those in our community who are at risk of hunger. Participants leave the training sessions with concrete steps they can take to improve their programs immediately, as well as new ideas, methods and even connections for advancing in the future.
As one agency representative from Virginia said, “Top Shelf gave us a clear picture of how all the parts come together to have a successful program. It was very informative and we will be using these skills to collaborate with our community.”
The Capital Area Food Bank is committed to investing resources in all of our partners, especially those who can take the time to improve their programs through training. As such, we are delighted to announce that through a partnership with the national chain Rent-A-Center, we will be distributing 35 brand new freezers to Top Shelf certified organizations in our network.
Some of these freezers will be delivered to organizations that have completed the most recent round of Top Shelf, and the rest will be made available to future Top Shelf certified organizations. As the hub for food sourcing, food distribution, and nutrition education in the Washington, DC area, we are committed to the highest quality service to our partners, who do the vital work that makes our own work possible. Together we’ll build a community where all have access to sufficient nutritious food.