Our Programs
Obtaining food for our neighbors who need itAt the core of Second Helpings are several impactful and innovative programs to obtain and distribute food to fill the need in our local communities.
The need is great.
According to Feeding America, there are 20,000 people in our area who are food insecure. This means that they don’t have access to enough food, or food of an adequate quality, to meet their basic needs.
In addition, high inflation or an unexpected expense brings in thousands more people looking for help.
These are the people that we and our Agency Partners serve. They include children and their families, senior citizens, and workers whose paychecks simply don’t stretch far enough to cover all necessities.
FOOD RESCUE
Gathering food for our Agency Partners to feed the hungry
Every day, you make it possible for teams of Second Helpings volunteers on Hilton Head Island, in Bluffton, and in the greater Beaufort area to pick up food from our 47 Food Donors. They deliver it, the same day, free of charge, to our 54 Agency Partners – local food pantries, soup kitchens, family and senior programs.
Agency Partners register annually to receive food at no cost and must follow safe food handling procedures. Second Helpings provides up to 100 percent of their food needs.
Thanks to the efforts of our 468 active and committed volunteers, every dollar donated enables us to rescue enough food for five meals, or purchase a pound of supplemental fresh produce for our neighbors in need.
TOURIST FOOD DONATION
POST-VACATION FOOD DONATION
Hilton Head Island attracts 2.5 million tourists every year. Many of them stay for a week in timeshares and like to cook many of their meals there. Starting in 2023, Second Helpings is offering departing vacationers the opportunity to drop off their unopened, non-perishable leftover food items on their way off the island.
Each Saturday morning from Memorial Day through Labor Day, vacationers can pull in to the Grayco Hardware and Home Store parking lot on Palmetto Bay Road from 7:30 am to 10 am, hand their food to a grateful volunteer, obtain a receipt and more information about Second Helpings, and even take one last souvenir photo with the Second Helpings truck!
HEALTHY FOOD INITIATIVE
ADDING fresh, healthy PRODUCE
Our food donors provide a limited amount of produce. Because produce is essential to a healthy diet, Second Helpings launched a program to solicit grants to supply supplemental fresh produce to our agency partners for our neighbors in need. Working with local farmers on St. Helena Island, near Beaufort, produce is harvested, packaged and delivered to the agencies. We also partner with wholesalers and our Food Donors.
Farmers: South Carolina has 220 days of growing seasons. We work with Dempsey Farms and the Gullah Farms Cooperative to distribute fresh produce to our agencies.
Wholesalers: Between growing seasons, and whenever there is a need, Second Helpings purchases food from a wholesaler and delivers produce to our agencies.
Beaufort Farmers’ Market: Second Helpings volunteers spend part of their weekends collecting donated fresh produce and bringing it to our agencies.
Food Donors: We partner with our local Food Donors to purchase fruits and vegetables at discount prices.
“I love everything that is given out and appreciate it so much as it saves me about $80 a month in food costs.”
Karen Reed works at Disney’s Hilton Head Island Resort and lives in Walterboro with her daughter and son. She thinks the Fill the Need Program “is wonderful” because it means she does not have to buy meat and fruit as often and her kids “love it.”
Filling the Need for Generations
Shirley Mitchell, also a Disney HHI Resort employee, lives in Yemassee. Fill the Need “helps out a lot as I can go in my freezer and there is chicken and other meat. I eat the fruit in the mornings.” Mitchell gets paid on Friday, so getting the food bag on Thursday “really helps.”
She often cooks for her daughter, son-in-law, and three grandchildren, and shares the food she picks up every week at Fill the Need with them.
fill the need
Fill the Need is a unique partnership established to meet the needs of workers from surrounding rural communities who work on Hilton Head Island. Second Helpings staff was asked by Palmetto Breeze Transit staff to help their commuters, who travel up to two hours each way. There are few food suppliers and no food pantries open when they return to their homes, and no local agency to serve them.
In 2017, local volunteer Margie Tomczak organized a food distribution at Palmetto Breeze’s hub station in Bluffton. Local businesses, churches and individuals make up the pool of volunteers who work every Thursday to distribute groceries to the Hilton Head Island workforce who ride the buses to work.
As one grateful bus rider remarked, “Payday is Friday. When Thursday comes around, the groceries received are badly needed to feed my family.”