In the past two years, the number of people coming to Helpline House food bank doubled. This spring, Helpline lost 40 percent of their funding to buy meat, dairy, and fruit and all of their funding to buy from local farms.

Major cuts to federal funding are affecting local farms, the Helpline House food bank, and more than 400 local families. But Friends of the Farms has just launched an effort called Shared Harvest to counteract the effect of the cuts.

Bainbridge Island Fruit Club has joined the BP Food Resilience Team's Grow for Helpline initiative. They're thinning and protecting apples at the publicly owned Johnson Farm so they'll grow big and healthy for donation this fall.

Our food banks face a perfect storm in which loss of individual food assistance programs will drive more people to food banks, while cuts to federal inputs will drastically lower the banks’ ability to feed people. But there is something you can do to help.

Helpline House, Island Volunteer Caregivers, and Bainbridge Prepares have partnered for 24 for 24, a community-wide effort to increase volunteering on the island. The partners ask everyone who can to give 24 hours to whatever cause they choose in 2024.