Eastlake Pea Patch

Thank you to the gardeners at the Eastlake Pea Patch for donating vegetables to the food bank. Kale, tomatoes and herbs along with other organic veggies were distributed to those with need.

Benefit concert May 15th at 7pm

World flute master Gary Stroutsos has performed at places such as the White House, the Seattle Art Museum and Princeton University, we are excited to say that on Saturday May 15th at 7pm Gary will be performing an ICS benefit concert at Immanuel Lutheran Church.

ICS's four programs offer services without discrimination and regard for geographic boundaries in the following areas; hygiene center, food bank, community lunches and men's recovery.

Buy tickets here: http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/108366

thank you nollie's for the party platters

nollie's cafe paused from making their delicious in-house treats like cinnamon rolls, chocolate cake with mousse and Jamaican jerk chicken to donate party platters for ICS's annual meeting. The party platters were eaten up so fast I didn't get a chance to have any but I will testify that the cinnamon rolls and soup are amazing. Thank you nollie's! located at Harrison & Minor open from Mon-Fri 6am-6pm follow them on twitter.

Meghan, Dan and Clifford

MAD Pizza Makes Donation

This afternoon Nick (pictured above) from MAD Pizza located at 1263 Thomas St. donated 50 lbs of brown sugar to the food bank, sugar is very hard to come by (especially 50 lbs of it) and we thank our pizza making friends for donating such a sought after item. I have been to MAD Pizza many times and enjoy the pizza and flat screen TVs, below is a picture from Summer 09 when Entiat Community Church visited Immanuel and we had lunch together at MAD (photo by Kymberlee della Luce).

Workplace Giving

Immanuel Church member Ben Rippel approached his employer about making a donation to the food bank and they said, 'Yes We Can'. Workplace giving at Immanuel Community Services is a beautiful thing, we are an independent 501 organization so the gift is tax deductible and the financial support continues our 25 year plus tradition of service to the community. Many companies have programs that support nonprofits like Immanuel Community Services, tell your workplace about the Immanuel food bank and you may hear 'yes' like Ben did. Thank you Ben for taking the initiative and for stopping by to drop off the check pictured above at a December distribution from left to right; Brandon program coordinator / Gary volunteer / Ben Immanuel Member.

Our New Community Partner: Whole Foods Market

Whole Foods Market at 2210 Westlake has reached out to their neighborhood food bank! We first met the folks at Whole Foods on World Food Day, October 16th, when they hosted a canned food drive for Immanuel; they put us and our donation table right by customer service and the customers responded by donating hundreds of pounds of food and hundreds of dollars.

Whole Foods must of liked having us there because now we are picking up grocery rescue food once a week. We are thankful for the much needed ongoing donations and are very grateful for the warmth and compassion the Whole Foods team members show us. Storefront photo provided by Life As Art.

Thanksgiving Basket Success!

We had a very successful 2009 Thanksgiving distribution; at every Immanuel food bank clients choose the food they take home, for Thanksgiving clients also received a basket (reusable shopping bag) containing items we usually do not have at distribution. Nearly 200 baskets filled with traditional Thanksgiving items (broth, stuffing and cranberry sauce) and 'hard to get items' (sugar, cooking oil and bandaids) went to those with need. Multiple food drives occurred in order to have enough food for this special purpose; thank you to Whole Foods, Antioch University Admissions, Immanuel Lutheran and ICS board member Katie Coleman for hosting food drives! Of course thank you to the volunteers pictured above (including our neighbors at Outrider Ad Agency) who assembled the baskets.