Your Opportunity To Share Your Garden Bounty With Neighbors In Need

*CLICK HERE: Find A Food Pantry Near You

[PDF]“Sharing your garden bounty with Neighbors in Need”

Shortly after I became the director of the West Milford Community Garden in late 2008, I learned that some of our garden plot holders — like millions of backyard gardeners nationwide — left large amounts of their garden produce unharvested when they grew more than they could possibly use.

Aware that hunger is a problem in our community, I suggested that we created a committee that would help to gather this extra food and deliver it to local food pantries. The program was named Ample Harvest.

Food pantries however were hard to find, in large part because most operate without an Internet site or yellow page listing. Google for example listed the nearest food pantry as being in a town 25 miles away, even though our own town had several of them. And it turns out this same challenge was faced by backyard gardeners nationwide wishing to share their bounty.

To address this dilemma, we created the AmpleHarvest.org Campaign, a nationwide effort to educate, encourage and enable gardeners with extra extra produce to easily donate to a local food pantry. AmpleHarvest.org gives food pantries the opportunity to be listed in a central nationwide directory so that gardeners can share their fresh produce and, garden-by-garden, help diminish hunger in America

Since it’s rollout in May 2009, the AmpleHarvest.org Campaign has continued to grow.

In August 2009, the National Gardening Association partenered with AmpleHarvest.org to help inform it’s members of the opportunity to donate garden produce.

In October 2009, the 1,000^th food pantry registered on the site.

In December 2009, at the recommendation of United Way, AmpleHarvest.org started providing United Way resource information to needy individuals to came to the site.

In January 2010, the AmpleHarvest.org Campaign released a free iPhone app to making it easier than ever to find a local food pantry.

In February 2010, the AmpleHarvest.org Campaign was invited by the US Department of Agriculture to become a partner organization to the USDA Peoples’ Garden Initiative, a nationwide effort to encourage community gardens that benefit the community and incorporate sustainable practices.

In May 2010, the AmpleHarvest.org Campaign was highlighted on CNN, and AmpleHarvest.org founder Gary Oppenheimer was nominated as a CNN hero of the Year.

Currently, there are 1,784 food pantries across America already registered on AmpleHarvest.org. You can view a nationwide map of all registered food pantries by clicking here.

AmpleHarvest.org is a not-for-profit organization. Everyone involved in the creation and support of AmpleHarvest.org has donated their time and talent. There are no costs to the food pantries or the gardeners for use of the site.

The web site exists due to the generosity and support of the below people and organizations who helped to design, create, critique, test and promote the AmpleHarvest.org