Our Programs

Secret Meals

Many children in Alabama rely heavily on free and reduced breakfasts and lunches five days a week. However, the weekend creates a nutritional gap, leaving many children hungry when they return to school on Monday. The BackPack/Secret Meals Program helps bridge the gap. Teachers discretely place the bags of food into the children’s backpacks, so they have nutritious meals throughout the weekend.

Currently WAFB packs 1,800 meals per week to support school-age children in Tuscaloosa, Greene, Pickens, Fayette, Lamar, Bibb, and Marion counties. For $140, you can help provide one child a meal every weekend for the entire school year!

Secret Meals Program

Beat Auburn Beat Hunger

In November there is another competition between the University of Alabama and Auburn University besides the 60-minute fight on the football field. Since 1994, the students at both schools participate in a fight of their own – a food fight. Students work all month to collect canned goods in a campaign those in Tuscaloosa call “Beat Auburn; Beat Hunger.”

In 2016 alone, the competition collected a total of 396,044 pounds of food.

The West Alabama Food Bank receives the food collected by the University of Alabama, and uses it to help feed those in need during the Thanksgiving and Christmas seasons.

During the competition, there have been many events to help raise awareness and collect goods including a 5k run, a Stamp Out Hunger letter writing event, a tailgate football game and much more.

Beat Auburn Beat Hunger

Fifth Quarter

During the closing minutes of all University of Alabama home games, volunteers from the University of Alabama’s Phi Gamma Delta and Alpha Gamma Delta greek organizations and trained food bank personnel salvage food prepared for fans in the North Zone, South Zone, and sky boxes. Vendors who prepare food for these areas donate all items that were not offered for service during the game. The food is immediately repackaged in vacuumed sealed containers and delivered to the food bank. The food is then offered to the food bank’s agencies for delivery to those in need. 5th Quarter also collects food from basketball and gymnastics events.

Fifth Quarter at Bryant-Denny Stadium has proven to be a huge success. The West Alabama Food Bank receives approximately 2,200 pounds of food per game. As with all of the WAFB programs, this is a collaboration between the food bank, volunteers, donors, and agencies, who join together to salvage and redistribute food. The food bank is thrilled to have the opportunity to participate in the Fifth Quarter program. By quickly preserving the food, many people receive much needed nutrition.

Thank you to all who make this program work each season!

Fifth Quarter

Mobile Pantry

A Mobile Pantry is designed to distribute truckloads of nutritious items directly to people who need it most. For the West Alabama Food Bank, the Mobile Pantry is one of our primary means of expanding our outreach to underserved areas, especially distant, impoverished, rural locations, many of which are in a food desert. A food desert is an area where no grocery store is located within 25 miles of a person’s home.

A sponsoring agency, identifies neighborhoods to visit and prequalifies the families served. Then the family comes and gets needed groceries.

Mobile Pantries

Senior Brown Box

The Senior Brown Box Program of the West Alabama Food Bank is a supplemental grocery program for eligible individuals age 65 and older who live in Lamar, Fayette, Pickens, Tuscaloosa, Bibb, Greene, Hale, and Sumter counties in Alabama. Each month, seniors are provided bags of groceries during the fourth week of the month – the time when most budgets are depleted. Seniors receive groceries with the help of volunteers who deliver the Senior Brown Boxes to those in need. There is no cost to the individuals served and eligibility is determined by using the federal income guidelines for poverty. The Senior Brown Box program is designed to help those whose main source of income is Social Security, and who normally have to choose between nutritious foods and crucial medications toward the end of the month when their monetary resources may be depleted.

The bulk of the food provided through this program is donated to the Food Bank by wholesalers, grocers, and distributors. Along with the food obtained through the Food Bank, food is also donated through food drives hosted by civic groups, religious organizations, individuals, businesses and other organizations.

Funding for the program comes through donations. Through the sponsorship program, $100 provides an individual with a Senior Brown Box at the end of each month for an entire year, however, donations of any amount help and are greatly appreciated.

Senior Programs