Kodiak Baptist Mission

As a Christian social service organization in Alaska, the purpose of Kodiak Baptist Mission is to improve the quality of life of children and their families by ministering to their unmet physical, social, emotional, spiritual and intellectual needs, by following the example set forth in the life of Jesus Christ. Research by Feeding America indicates that we would need to develop and distribute 395,737 pounds of food to address the food insecurity needs of the Kodiak Island Borough. Presently the Kodiak Island Food Bank is distributing very close to 250,000 pounds of food (246,298 lbs. in 2012). This level of service places the Food Bank approximately two thirds of the way to fully addressing food insecurity for Kodiak Island. This is of course a very simplified analysis of an incredibly complicated issue and to assume that just churning out pounds will precipitate a solution would be naive. That said, the fact that this issue is being addressed to this level does offer us a significant and positive macro indicator that while these needs are significant, food insecurity around the Kodiak archipelago is a surprisingly addressable issue. This fact is even further encouraged by the consideration that the total food resource needed to meet this goal fully exists and actually far exceeds the needs of the island; it simply needs to be diverted out of the waste stream and away from our land fill and to the food banking. Presently wasted food resources are only being tapped minutely in Kodiak. With the exception of Cost Savers which is diverting 100% of its usable discards, the remainder of our grocers in Kodiak including the Coast Guard base, divert only a fraction of their usable discards to the food banking stream. It would be very interesting to see an analysis of how much food waste is being funneled around the food bank directly into our landfill. After having a community food bank, the next most important step in the strategy to address food insecurity is to develop this nearly untapped resource. To do this we have to understand the bias for disposal and barriers to donating.