2025 brought us a number of challenges and triumphs. From funding cuts to a government shutdown, food banks had to be agile, constantly responding to unprecedented challenges.
We’re proud to say that with the support of our community, volunteers, supporters, and staff, we met these challenges head on and continued to find new ways to support our neighbors experiencing food insecurity.
We look forward to another year of continuing our mission to fight hunger in Berks & Schuylkill counties.
Read on for the Top 10 highlights of 2025…a little taste of the many things we’re proud of accomplishing in the past year.
10. Giving the Warehouse a Facelift
If you were last in our warehouse in early 2025, you might notice a few changes. With the departure of nearly half our staff for the Community Kitchen in April (more on that later), we decided it was time to spruce up a few spaces in the warehouse.
In April, the section of the warehouse where our volunteers spend most of their time got a fresh coat of paint – in Helping Harvest green & gray!
Then, towards the end of the year, the volunteer lobby got a little glow-up, with flooring donated by About All Floors, new furniture donated by Tower Health, a fresh coat of paint and new décor—including some artwork designed by kids at Olivet Boys & Girls Club ahead of our Berks County Celebration of Community & Hope event in October.
9. Helping Ensure Our Neighbors Live Healthier Lives
Over the past year, our focus has not just been on providing food to neighbors experiencing food insecurity but also providing healthy food to those who need it most. Additionally, through a focus on nutrition education, cooking demos, simple recipes, and more, we can help ensure that neighbors know best how to use the food they receive from us.
The Healthy Pantry Initiative (known as HPI) is a state-wide program with a goal to increase the access and availability of healthy food options for people that use charitable food systems. At Helping Harvest, HPI is in use at seventeen of our distribution sites, including the Exeter Food Pantry, the Schuylkill Valley Food Pantry, three of our Mobile Markets, and more. Each location that is part of the initiative receives materials to help those attending a distribution make healthy choices when they can, and our on-staff nutrition educator is a mainstay at these locations.
8. Adding New Opportunities to Tried-and-True Methods for Food Drives
2025 was THE year for food drives. November and December are always a busy time for food donations, and this year was even busier in the wake of the federal government shutdown and SNAP benefits pause. So many of you wanted to help, and believe me, we felt that love…to the tune of 60+ food drives at our busiest time.
We also added a new way for you to donate food: virtual food drives. This new partnership with #GiveHealthy allows our supporters to conduct food drives for geographically distributed participants and also leaves the logistics of food delivery to our friends at #GiveHealthy! We are excitedly expecting our first delivery from a number of virtual food drives…with lots of FRESH food (apples, broccoli, tuna, chicken, oatmeal, and more) to be delivered to the warehouse.
7. Launching (and Growing) the Community Garden, Our Monthly Giving Program
In January 2025, we started the Helping Harvest Community Garden monthly giving group. In just 12 months, the Garden has GROWN to nearly 150 members!
The Community Garden is made up of members who give a monthly gift to support Helping Harvest and our mission to feed neighbors experiencing hunger in Berks & Schuylkill counties. Community Garden members receive a special welcome packet and gift, have the opportunity for regular access to and conversations with a member of our staff, and receive exclusive behind-the-scenes content throughout the year.
If you are interested in joining the Community Garden and making an ongoing difference in our community, please select a monthly gift on this form or contact Blake Reed at breed@helpingharvest.org or 610-926-5802 x222.
6. Expanding Our School Pantry Program for Middle & High School Students
In addition to the well-known Weekender Program, which provides a bag of easy to prepare meals and snacks for younger students to eat over the weekend, we are actively expanding our School Pantry Program for older students. In 2025, we launched three new school pantries, with more on the way in 2026.
Crimson Cabinet opened at the D.H.H. Lengle Middle School in the Pottsville Area School District last school year in March. The Spartan Station in the Wyomissing Area School District Jr/Sr High School and Hurricane Cabinet at Schuylkill Haven Area Middle School were brand new for the 2025-2026 school year.
School pantries offer students food assistance in a familiar environment. The school pantry model is flexible to meet the needs of the school and their community. We are working to expand this program throughout our service territory to meet the needs of older students and their families.
Find out more about our Youth Programs, including Weekender and school pantries.
5. Forming Stronger Bonds with Our Agency Partners
We couldn’t serve anywhere near the number of neighbors we do without our wonderful agency partners. They – and their volunteers – are the backbone of our distribution system, along with Helping Harvest staff and volunteers. Partner agencies include food pantries, shelter programs, and meal & snack programs, among others. To give you an idea of our agencies’ impact, in 2025, our pantry partners and Mobile Markets – which includes 117 entities – served almost 60,000 households at least once during that year (many of those households visited a pantry or Mobile Market multiple times). Our 19 meal/snack program partners served over 355,000 meals and our shelter partner programs served almost 990,000 meals in 2025.
2025 was also the first year we held an agency conference in a number of years – an opportunity for us to gather with representatives from our agency partners and learn together (and from one another). Held at Penn State Schuylkill in May, the conference brought together 145 representatives from 65 of our partner agencies, 20 individuals representing various community resources, and 14 Helping Harvest staff members. The day of learning and sharing included a welcome by President Jay Worrall, keynote & book signing by Dr. Katie Martin, CEO of More Than Food Consulting, guest speaker Chris Rainwater, Service Insights Manager at Feeding America, a food pantry panel discussion, resource tables, Q&As, and more.
4. Celebrating Our Dedicated Volunteers’ Service & Reinforcing Our Ranks
We say it all the time: we couldn’t do what we do without our fabulous and dedicated volunteers. From distributing food at Mobile markets in everything from freezing rain and wind to blistering heat to sorting through and bagging tons of potatoes at the warehouse (and yes, that includes sometimes picking out yucky ones) to tearing up while chopping a bazillion onions in the kitchen, our volunteers’ contributions are invaluable to the work we do. In 2025, we had a total of 2,753 volunteer join us for over 37,350 hours! That’s the equivalent of 17 full time staff members – wow! We also celebrated long-serving employees’ milestones, including some of our friends who have spent up to 6,000 hours (and counting) with us!
We’re always looking for new helping hands to join our ranks. If you’re interested in volunteering, please learn more and register on our volunteer page.
3. Opening the Neighbor-Choice Pantry at the Oakbrook Neighborhood Resource Center
In September, in partnership with Reading Housing Authority, we opened the new Helping Harvest run pantry at the Oakbrook Neighborhood Resource Center. This pantry is a client-choice pantry (meaning neighbors can choose items based on their own family’s dietary and cultural preferences and needs) and is also part of the Healthy Pantry Initiative (see more on that in #9) which aims to improve access to nutritious food options in food pantries, thereby promoting healthier choices and supporting community health. As such, our Nutrition Educator, Anthony, is a regular fixture at the Oakbrook pantry, providing neighbors with nutrition tips, healthy meal ideas and more. Neighbors can make an appointment to visit the Oakbrook pantry, which is now open twice a month.
2. Meeting Challenges Head-On & Expanding Our Capacity to Serve Neighbors
We and our partners in the charitable food system faced a number of challenges throughout 2025. From funding cuts to the pause in SNAP benefits caused by the federal government shutdown, it seemed like nearly every month brought a new challenge. But in true Helping Harvest fashion, we met these challenges head-on. Our new Helping Harvest Community Kitchen (see more below) produced somewhere in the neighborhood of 90,000 meals between frozen heat-and-eat ready meals distributed by our partners and programs, hot congregate meals served by our agency partners, and bulk ingredients repackaged into family-sized portions and distributed through our network. Additionally, in 2025 we renewed our focus on food sourcing and strengthening our relationship with retail partners. This included the creation of a new staff position that is focused on food sourcing.
All of these efforts to bridge the gap between funding cuts and increased need for our services (due to inflation, rising grocery prices, and more) paid off. 2025 was our biggest year ever since our founding in 1983: We distributed 11,102,818 lbs. of food valued at $21,855,778. October 2025 was our second highest month of distribution by weight ever. We distributed 1,130,976 lbs. of food throughout Berks & Schuylkill counties that month. The only time we distributed more food was during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic – in June 2020 when we distributed 1,157,928 lbs. of food. October 2025 was also our highest ever monthly distribution in Schuylkill County at 284,466 lbs. The previous high was 251,521 lbs. in November 2022.
Throughout these challenges and changes, President Jay Worrall spoke out about the challenges faced by food banks and our neighbors. Most notably he had guest editorials featured on how both food banks and local families would be impacted by federal funding cuts and post-government shutdown demand for food assistance.
1. Opening the Helping Harvest Community Kitchen in Downtown Reading
In April 2025, nearly half of our staff moved into the Helping Harvest Community Kitchen adjacent to the Goggleworks Center for the Arts in downtown Reading. The 7,000 square foot commercial kitchen (with adjoining office space and conference rooms) began producing heat-and-eat ready meals just two weeks later. The kitchen itself is run by three full-time professional chefs who develop menus based on available donated and purchased food products while supervising meal production, packaging, and our dedicated kitchen volunteers.
In August, we held an opening celebration for the kitchen, which was attended by various supporters, stakeholders and community members – including a number of folks who were instrumental in securing over $20 million in funding, including federal, state, Berks County, and Reading City public funding, as well as private contributions from numerous companies, individuals, and foundations.
In 2025, the kitchen produced around 90,000 meals between frozen heat-and-eat ready meals, hot congregate meals, and bulk ingredients repackaged into smaller portions. This included a massive Thanksgiving meals effort which resulted in the production and distribution of 14,386 Thanksgiving heat-and-eat ready meals comprised of smoked turkey with house made gravy, sweet potato mash, green beans and cranberry sauce.
We can’t wait to see what 2026 brings for Helping Harvest as we continue our mission to fight hunger in Berks & Schuylkill counties. Thank you for your support!