Well Waters A quarterly newsletter of The Well Outreach

A Night of Hope

On February 22 we welcomed over 400 guests to Worldwide Stages for our annual Night of Hope gala. This event, which is the first of our three major fundraisers in the year, offered a catered dinner, a live auction and a concert by We The Kingdom.

Thanks to the generosity of our guests, the event helped The Well Outreach raise $200,000 to help with funding for the first quarter of 2025.

The Pursuit of Healthy Food

Peeps for my Peeps

Sometimes The Well Outreach receives the weirdest food.

Last year, we received a pallet of pizza sausage, just rolling around in a huge watermelon box. Another time we took in a box of white cheddar Cheez-Its that was practically the size of a car. We call our food rescue run on Wednesdays “What-is-it Wednesday?” due to the wild variety of food that we bring back from one of our food bank partners.

One of the most memorable items we ever received was when six huge pallets of marshmallow peeps were brought in the door to our Spring Hill Pantry. Peeps - the little yellow marshmallow birds or bunnies covered with sticky sugar that are commonly seen at Easter time. They have the nutritional value of a dentist appointment.

I looked at those pallets and had a decision to make: can I give these to our families with a clear conscience?

Years ago at The Well Outreach we gave out anything we could find; food was scarce, families were forming crowds at the door and it was a daily scramble just to keep food on the shelves. I remember multiple trips to Aldi in the middle of the day just to have enough food to restock the shelves. A single pallet of food was unthinkable and pallets in the plural was a dream.

But roughly two years ago I remember sensing the winds changing, and I realized that simply giving out whatever food to our families wasn’t enough anymore. We had evolved to a new level of responsible care for our families - not just to give them food, but to make sure the food we gave them was good. And good for them.

At the time I did what any ops person might do - I built a pie chart. Then I studied the percentages of food that we gave out by category.

• How much processed food did we serve?
• How much protein?
• How much produce?
• Dairy?

I was discouraged to discover that our distribution showed that roughly 75% was processed food, with minimal dairy, produce and protein. Our servings were largely foods with high fat, sugar and sodium content, and I felt a powerful conviction that this wasn’t good enough.

Since that time, we’ve never looked back. The Well Outreach has accepted the responsibility of distributing thousands and thousands of meals to our community, with a core value and a moral obligation to strive to provide our families with not just food, but nutrition.

In early 2023 we found two new local farm partners that support us with farm fresh produce, and for the last eighteen months we’ve had access to a grant that provided great produce from a farm in Bellevue. We then added a local dairy partner and ramped up our grocery rescue, which massively increased the amount of nutritious food we serve to our families.

Last year The Well Outreach launched our hydroponic farming initiative, bringing over 1,000 servings of leafy greens to our families each month. We serve more fresh produce to more families now than ever before. And we’re committed to always improving those numbers. It’s who we are and part of what we believe dignity looks like for our families.

A typical serving to families in 2025 shows that less than 33% of the food we give out is categorically high in sugar, fat or sodium. We’ve accepted that we simply can’t give food-insecure families, often with significant health concerns, nothing but empty calories. They need to be nourished with a full shopping experience that meets their nutritional needs. And on most days now, I think we honor that expectation in a way that should make us all feel proud of our work.

So what happened to the Peeps? Ultimately, we shipped four pallets to another agency and broke down the final two to serve to our own guests. I mean come on, a few Peeps can’t hurt, right?

Run For Hunger

Our fourth annual Run For Hunger will take place on the 4th of July at Summit High School. This is the second fundraiser of the year for us and is a perfect event for the whole family. In fact, it's three events in one!

Get your 4th of July off to a flying start by joining us all the fun, fitness and family time. This year, we are inviting participants to help us by fundraising, and we will have prizes for the top three fundraisers.

So get yourself registered and ready to lace up your shoes to make a difference in the lives of those in our community who are experiencing food insecurity.

Nourish & Flourish Campaign

Through the course of May, June and July, we are focusing our fundraising efforts to best support the additional strain many families feel when their children no longer receive the free and reduced cost lunches their schools provide during the academic year.

During the summer months, The Well Outreach recognizes two significant changes in light of children from food-insecure families being out of school:

• Our two pantries will see as much as a 25% increase in visits.
• Parents of students who receive meal assistance during the school year will see an increase of $40 per week per student.

Summertime is commonly thought of as a time of warmth and abundance, but for some, it represents a time of increased scarcity. Our Nourish & Flourish campaign works in both recognition and relief of that reality.