In 2008, the Houston Food Bank launched a $55 million capital campaign to move to a larger facility that would allow it to distribute 100% more food to hungry families in the Houston area. The Kinder Foundation stepped up in 2009 with a $1 million donation to fund the Portwall Facility’s Repack Room. The Repack Room greatly improves the Food Bank’s capacity to help hungry families by serving as a place for volunteers to repack bulk items into small quantities for distribution. Over the past year alone, the Food Bank served 74 million nutritious meals to 800,000 people in southeast Texas.

In 2013, the Kinder Foundation donated $1 million to the Houston Food Bank to support the Backpack Buddy program, the largest single donation that the program has received to date. Many children who rely on free or reduced-price lunches during the school year go home to meager or no meals on weekends. Launched in 2006, the Houston Food Bank’s Backpack Buddy program works to fill that gap. On Fridays or the last day before a holiday weekend, at participating schools and other locations, children take home child-friendly, non-perishable, easily consumed and vitamin-fortified food. See video.