Helping Harvest Fresh Food Bank

Helping Harvest Fresh Food Bank, a Partner Food Bank of Feeding America, has continued to successfully fulfill its mission feed neighbors experiencing hunger in Schuylkill & Berks counties since opening in 1983.  Helping Harvest is vital to the health of our community by supplying an ever-rotating inventory of fresh, frozen and non-perishable foods to nourish neighbors struggling with food insecurity. 

In 2025, Helping Harvest distributed over 2.8 million pounds of food valued at $5.7 million to people in need in Schuylkill County through its network of over 100 partner programs. This network consists of traditional food assistance programs such as food pantries, soup kitchens and shelters. Additionally, Helping Harvest operates several highly effective direct service programs that include:

• The Weekender Program, which serves students and their families at more than 20 Schuylkill County schools each week. in 2025, 51,575 Weekender bags were distributed to Schuylkill County students.
• The Senior Food Box Program, which nourishes residents at 42 Schuylkill County sites each month, and which distributed almost 229,000 pounds of food, plus over 36,000 pounds of extra fresh and frozen food to seniors in Schuylkill County in 2025.
• Mobile Market sites, which provide nutritious meat, produce and dairy items in locations including: Tamaqua, Shenandoah, Pottsville, Valley View, Girardville, Auburn, Minersville, and Orwigsburg. 

In 2025, Helping Harvest also opened its Helping Harvest Community Kitchen, which produces and provides heat-and-eat ready meals that are distributed throughout its service territory, primarily to seniors, and repackages donated bulk food items into family-friendly portions, that are then distributed by agency partners.

To learn more about Helping Harvest, please visit helpingharvest.org.