Please enjoy this co-authored press release by Northwest Harvest (NWH) and the Yakima School District (YSD). Should you have questions, please reach out to Kirsten Fitterer, Executive Director of Communications and Engagement for the Yakima School District at fitterer.kirsten@ysd7.org or 509-573-7000 or Jeanie Chunn, Director of Community Engagement for Northwest Harvest at jeaniec@northwestharvest.org or 206-255-4562.
On Tuesday, March 21, the Yakima School District and Northwest Harvest signed a contract to work together to receive, organize, store, and prep-for-delivery the food needed to make student meals, moving this service from the district warehouse on North 4th Avenue to the new Northwest Harvest cold storage facility off of Fruitvale Blvd.
The Yakima School District makes breakfast and lunch available free of charge for our 16,000 students. We identified a need to improve the daily operations of preparing the student meals. Our warehouse is aging and is too small to receive, organize, store, and distribute food efficiently. Moving these operations to the state-of-the-art Northwest Harvest facility is exciting as it will improve efficiencies that will likely reduce waste and costs.
The contracted partnership between the two organizations, which was signed on March 21, 2023, creates efficiencies for the Yakima School District in receiving, organizing, and preparing for the delivery of the food needed to their 22 schools that serve breakfast and lunch, free of charge to all families, daily.
(NWH) Northwest Harvest is proud to partner with the Yakima School District. This will be the first organization we are partnering with for their food storage needs.
"We see and deeply respect the role that the Yakima School District plays in reducing hunger in Yakima. When organizations are better able to provide nutritious meals to kids, we see this as creating more equity in the food system." (Thomas Reynolds)
When Northwest Harvest made the decision to move the center of our operations to Yakima, we intentionally built infrastructure to help support our local small and mid-size farmers and other food system organizations. It is our hope to be good neighbors and provide a sliding scale model for cold food storage and transportation to the Yakima Valley.
More information about Northwest Harvest:
Northwest Harvest is a food justice organization striving to end hunger in Washington state. Part of a justice-centered movement, we advocate to change ineqitable policies, practices, and institutions that perpetuate hugner and pverty. We partner with over 400 community organizations, food banks, and schools to operate an emergency food supply chain in every county in Washington. We run two no-cost grocery markets, one in Seattle and one in Yakima to open April 5th. Together, we ensure communities across our state can access the nuturious food they want and need to thrive.
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