Our Story

The Yavapai Food Neighbors Project was started by a group of amazing community volunteers

The Yavapai Food Neighbors Project was started in the quad cities area in August of 2014 based on a model originally developed in Ashland, Oregon in 2009 and adopted in the Verde Valley in 2013. The objective was to make it easy for people to donate food to local food banks. The originators realized that many of their neighbors wanted to help fight hunger in their community, but for one reason or another, never get around to it. So they adopted a simple, door-to-door food collection system to enable people to pitch in. Thus it became a donor drive as opposed to a food drive.

YFNP’s first collection consisted of only six Neighborhood Coordinators who collected about 1200 pounds of food. Today the two collection sites have more than 60 Neighborhood Coordinators and 1400 food donors and we’re still growing! Since that humble beginning the project has collected over 350,000 pounds of food for the food banks and schools programs.

We are currently providing food to The Prescott Community Cupboard, The Prescott Valley Food Bank, The Chino Valley Hungry Kids Project, Mayer Hungry Kids Weekend Backpack program, The Peeples Valley Elementary School, St. Luke’s Church Food Pantry and Yarnell Food Bank. These programs are committed to having volunteers assist in the collection process.