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74 Portrait: SMALL BUSINESS — BIG IMPACT * March 17, 2011 Helping others is their business

Local volunteers make a real difference for people down on their luck

By SCOTT KEITH

n this rough and rocky economy, Washington County thift stores and food banks are making it easier for struggling families to keep well fed and adequately clothed.

These are small business of a sort. They’re just more concerned with the end result — helping people who need help — than simply making money.

Oregon Food Bank

Oregon Food Bank is the hub of a statewide network of 20 regional food banks and about 950 social service agen-cies. Rachel Bristol, Oregon Food Bank’s chief executive officer, says Oregon Food Bank West opened last year in Beaverton and is much larger than the old Hillsboro facility.

“We have about twice the dry-storage space here that we had over there,” says Bristol, adding that there’s more room for volunteers and food repack projects. Oregon Food Bank West has a teaching kitchen, a volunteer action center, a per-ishable repack room, a cooler and a huge freezer.

Oregon Food Bank West distributes food to about 100 agencies, such as churches, every week; agencies provide direct service to needy Oregonians in Washington County.

“In the first half of this fiscal year (July through December), member programs out here distributed just under 40 thou-sand emergency food boxes,” says Bristol. About 120 thousand people in the county turn to the food bank network for help. Each week, agencies arrive at the Beaverton distribution center. They can send in their orders ahead of time, via the Internet. Staff and volunteers will pull their orders and have it all ready for them on the dock.

“In the retail world,” says Bristol, “we would be the wholesale distributor, and our member agencies would be the retail-ers that are getting the food into the hands of people who need it.”

Bristol says the Oregon Food Bank’s mission is “to eliminate hunger and its root causes because no one should be hun-gry.”

St. Matthew Lutheran Church

One of Oregon Food Bank West’s agencies is the emergency food program at St. Matthew Lutheran Church in

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PROFESSIONAL HELPERS — Among those helping their less fortunate neigh-bors are (clockwise

from top) Beaverton’s Assistance League of PortlandThrift Shop Manager Lennette Watson; Rachel Bristol, CEO of the Oregon Food Bank; Nancy Burnett, who han-dles advertising and publicity for the American Cancer Society Discovery Shop in Tigard; and St. Matthew’s Lutheran Church food pantry volun-teers Bev Bekooy and Mary Anne

Nance.

Photos by Scott Keith