Welcome to Sharenet Food Bank

We provide the greater Kingston, WA area with emergency

food provision, screened emergency power and rental assistance

for clients faced with shut off notices or eviction and a weekend

take home food program for school children.

Winner of Food Lifeline’s "Excellence in Community Resource Development”, ShareNet's mission is to fight hunger in North Kitsap County in a manner that respects the dignity of those we serve. Our service area includes Kingston, Hansville, Port Gamble, Indianola, Eglon, Little Boston, and some border addresses in Suquamish and Poulsbo.

ShareNet's Thrift Store carries quality, gently used goods at super-bargain prices.  All proceeds go right back into the operation, and help fund the food bank.

We’re here to help. All you need to do is give us a call and we will do our best to provide assistance. In the meantime, feel free to take a look around our site to learn more about Sharenet Food Bank and Thrift Store. Check our thrift store page for deals!

ShareNet thrift store, food bank gain 800 square feet | ShareNet & You

By MARK INCE
Kingston Community News Columnist
April 2, 2012 · Updated 11:22 AM 

Anyone who ever visited ShareNet and took a serious look around knew we worked with some pretty serious space constraints.  This was true almost from the start of occupying our site (26061 United Road  NE, off Bond behind Joe’s Automotive) in 2007. We quickly filled the space to capacity.

It became painfully clear as the number of clients we served tripled over the next three years, then nearly doubled from 2010-11. Staff and volunteers graciously managed this new growth, though it meant a lot of logistical and storage headaches. It may not have been convenient but it inspired great teamwork and movements that almost had to be choreographed.

In 2012, ShareNet’s board took on a study and research project of what alternatives were available, and what a new space for ShareNet might look like. After much consideration, board members Bernard Delettrez and Dave Henden negotiated for new space adjacent to our existing space, making the transition easier than moving to a new site.

In February, framing began on a large new room carved out of Swift Plumbing’s warehouse, on the other side of a previously shared wall. Weeks later, a double door was punched out and the new space was joined to our old one. A lot of the work was hands on by Bernie and friends he enlisted to help.

Our thrift store’s donation processors had worked in an especially cramped space. A wall which had provided a partial divider between the store and the food bank came down, removed to enlarge their area. When that wall came down, it was more obvious than ever what a tiny space they had worked in, pejoratively nicknamed “the hallway.” That project remains in progress, but the “the hallway” will at least be doubled, carved from part of the food bank’s old space. Two washer/dryer units which had cramped their activities have also been moved.

Staff and volunteers are learning how to best utilize all the new space. Volunteers have said they might “need roller skates” and they might “lose a few pounds” navigating the extra square footage, but we know from experience the new space will be quickly filled as we find uses for every square inch.

We now have the capacity to maintain a larger, more efficient food stock. Food box packers, workers repackaging bulk items, and packers for special programs such as our Food to Grow On program for school kids will now have some room to spread out.

Change is hard, but growth directed with the community we serve in mind benefits all of us.  We are deeply grateful that community support made the expansion possible.

— Mark Ince is executive director of ShareNet. Contact him at sharenetdirector@centurytel.net.

Recent Support Heroes:

Kingston Post Office

A.Y. Petter Family Advised Fund
Liberty Bay Auto and Dave Krafsky
The Munson Family Foundation
Port Gamble S'Klallam Tribe
United Way

Links:

Check out Service Above Self Radio

and our recent podcast

Our Facebook Page

ShareNet’s 2011 End of Year Summary

With great humility and appreciation, we thank the hundreds of local individuals, businesses, and service clubs who working together responded to Neighbor Aid, raising  $73,846 during the last three months of 2011 to support our work in 2012.

The Year in Review

Remember how your Mom used to tell you to clean your plate because there were children in other countries going hungry? Well, it was true, and now that story has moved from other countries to down the road, across town, maybe even right next door.  More people than ever in our community struggle, often in secret, with what’s become known as food insecurity.

In 2011 ShareNet experienced another huge increase in clients and individual service instances after 2010’s relatively stable growth statistics.  Our site, largely volunteer staff, and budget were again challenged by this growth, the kind of growth that  signals further instability in the community. Kitsap was slower than most of the country in feeling the deep economic downturn now facing all Americans, but once it hit it hit hard, and has apparently settled in for a long stay. The majority of our clients report unemployment or under-employment as the main reason they are availing themselves of food bank services.

2011 Year-End Statistics

Individual service instances: 13,160

Food distributed: 280,691 lbs.

Volunteer hours: 3,938

ShareNet distributed more food than ever in 2011, 280,691 lbs of it, but the real news in these stats is another jump in the individual service instances from 7,236 in 2010 to 13,160 in 2011. Growth at an organization is usually a good thing, but unfortunately this stat represents increased struggle in our community with hunger and unemployment issues. Volunteer hours also increased by about 1,000 hours. With every increase in service, it takes more volunteer commitment to operate ShareNet, and both our current volunteers and our community stepped up.


Food to Grow On

ShareNet‘s weekend take home program for school children, sometimes termed a “backpack program,” continued strongly in 2011, adding new students, a new school (Kingston High), and expanded beyond the traditional school year to serve Wolfle Elementary School’s summer session.  Food to Grow On is one of those programs that provide immediate satisfaction in that we get to see the gratitude and delight on children’s faces, not to mention school staff, in receipt of this food.

Thrift Shop

Retail sales in Sharenet’s Thrift Shop help fuel our program. But the store is about more than sales. It’s about helping lives through the means available there, such as providing free clothing, blankets, coats, shoes, or other goods to those in need. The store also includes ShareWear, free professional attire for those re-entering the workforce who cannot afford the clothes they need to start the job. Over the holidays, a single father recently relocated to Kingston and still struggling with the expense of the move, came to us seeking a coat for his young daughter. There weren’t many good options in the shop at the time, but soon after a secret Santa donated a brand new coat with the tags still on in just her size. She was so thrilled when she got the coat, her Dad brought her back to thank us in person. Our work at ShareNet often allows us to witness this kind of grace.

Other Significant Support

Beyond the individual community support that is so vital to our operation, ShareNet benefits in a variety of ways from its membership in Food Lifeline and Northwest Harvest, our region’s two largest hunger-relief organizations. Significantly discounted and sometimes free food is made available to members of these agencies, as well as the latest news and best practices policies which ensure a food bank operates within the appropriate guidelines. Food Lifeline is the local representation of the nation’s largest hunger-relief charity, Feeding America, and ShareNet has an elected post on its Membership Agency Council. Food Lifeline administers the Grocery Rescue program, which ShareNet operates locally, benefiting from food donated from grocery stores, in our case the Kingston Albertsons and the Poulsbo Walmart.  
 
Many of the local network news events or other widely publicized food donation events you see are connected either to Food Lifeline, Feeding America, or Northwest Harvest, and ShareNet shares in that bounty as it trickles down locally. ShareNet also receives funding from FEMA’s Emergency Food and Shelter Program, and from the Suquamish Tribe and the Port Gamble S’Klallam Tribe. We have an excellent mix of support, and yet it is still our individual community donations which, overwhelmingly, allow us to operate. The Kingston Farm and Garden Co-op made significant contributions of fresh produce from their Giving Garden project in 2011, and we are also a member of the Kitsap County Food Bank Coalition.
 
Emergency Utility and Housing Assistance

In 2011 ShareNet, with its partner in administering this assistance, St. Vincent de Paul at St. Olaf’s, again prevented hundreds of evictions and power shutoffs by distributing over $30,000 in crisis assistance to local residents unable to pay their bills. We remain the only significant provider of crisis assistance for our particular service area.

Seasonal Events

Our Thanksgiving holiday meal box giveaway was another big success in 2011, serving 695 individuals with a total of 11,321 lbs. of food, each box containing enough for Thanksgiving and several meals beyond. Our Christmas Gift Shop served 190 children.   ShareNet provided more than 165 new, well-stocked backpacks to struggling families in our community at our Back to School Supplies event, and donated the remainder of what was collected to local schools.


Mark Ince
Executive Director