Category: Donations

Much Needed Updates to The Friendship Center Spaces

October 17, 2025

From October 29 – 31, 2025 The Friendship Center we will be closed and focused on deep cleaning and making much needed updates to our spaces. Since our remodel in 2022 and recent acquisition of our community space at 2709 W Lawrence, we have not closed for more than a day of pantry distribution to deep clean and beautify our spaces.

The Friendship Center is for the community, and we desire to make our spaces even more community-oriented. We have recently rearranged our pantry shopping area to increase the number of aisles and access to fresh food, pantry items, baby food items, and other household needs. Additionally, we have improved the back room storage and flow to maximize efficiency. During these three days we will focus on deep cleaning our pantry and kitchen, making small upgrades throughout, and repainting and reorienting our community space in 2709 W Lawrence.

To make all of these changes possible, we need your help!

Volunteer

We need about 144 volunteers between Oct 29 – 31 to make these projects possible. You can sign up by joining our Grocery Distribution opportunity and navigating to the shifts on Oct 29 – 31. Please be mindful to only sign up for painting shifts if you have prior experience painting. If your group is interested, please contact Ali Cassity at info@friendshipcenterchicago.org. All shifts are two hours long.

Purchase From Our Wish List

We need some items to upgrade our spaces and make painting possible. Check out our Amazon wishlist with items you can purchase and ship directly to us.

Additionally, we are accepting donations of gently used or new toys and books:
– Board books and children’s stories in any language
– Manipulatives: big piece puzzles, magnatiles
– Small cars/trucks
– Small plastic dolls like Barbie’s or Bratz
– Coloring books or drawing tablets
– Crayons
– Fidget toys
Please contact Lauren Diaz if you would like to donate toys or books at info@friendshipcenterchicago.org

Make a Donation

We’re seeking $2,500 to help cover the cost of paint, paint supplies, and other items needed to update our spaces. Make a gift today!

Five Ways To Fight Hunger

Every September, organizations fighting hunger come together to raise national awareness and encourage communities to take action to end hunger. 

Here are some practical ways you can take action this month. 

  1. Learn the Latest Facts About Hunger
    Food insecurity is a problem for 47 million people in the United States and 70,000 people in our 10 mile service area around The Friendship Center. 
    How many people in your community are facing hunger today? Check out Feeding America’s Map the Meal Gap tool to inform yourself about food insecurity around you. 
  1. Share About People Facing Hunger With the People Around Your Table
    Engage with the people at your dinner table, whether it be your family, friends, roommates, or neighbors, about our nation’s issue with food insecurity. We’ll share insights and education on our newsletter and social platforms about people facing hunger throughout the month. 

If you have children in your household, it is important to share about people facing hunger and help them build empathy for their neighbors who are food insecure. Help your family visualize hunger by using the following prompt:

  • What does it feel like to be hungry?
  • What would you do if you couldn’t eat for a whole day? 
  • What things might be harder to do while hungry?

Work together to draw or write a story of someone who is facing hunger. If more direction is needed, ask a question, such as: How would you feel if you had to go the entire school year without breakfast or lunch?

  1. Volunteer at Your Local Food Pantry
    You can volunteer a few hours each week and play a critical role in ending hunger for your neighbors. Some volunteer activities include sorting, bagging, distribution, client intake, dinner prep, cooking, packing meals to go, and home delivery. Additionally, volunteers are needed to help work special events like the Farmer’s Market, Oktoberfestiversary, Mayfestiversary, etc. We have a role for any level of skillset and availability. 

 Sign up for volunteer opportunities at The Friendship Center on our website. 

  1. Organize a Food Drive
    The number of people facing hunger in our community has grown this summer. Hosting a food drive helps keep our shelves stocked with non-perishable food and hygiene supplies. The process is simple, fill out our food drive form to get started. 
  1. Donate to End Hunger

Our neighbors rely on your generosity and partnership to foster hope and dignity through access to food and vital resources. $50 a month can feed a family of four and this month you can double your impact* thanks to a generous matching fund from neighborhood hunger fighters.

*All donations up to $5,000 will be doubled this month!

How Summer Hunger is Impacting Kids

It’s finally summer in Chicago! Kids in our community are free to play, explore, and have fun with their friends, but some will experience the “summer slide”. According to Feed the Children the summer slide happens when kids do not get the nutrition their bodies and minds need to keep developing and their abilities and knowledge regress instead of progressing over summer. 

For every four kids you see at the park laughing and playing tag, one will go home to a fridge and pantry with little to no food. 

It’s a sobering reality when we think about the fun of summertime and the mix of stressed-out parents trying to figure out how to provide enough nutritious food while struggling to make ends meet. 

Families that are enrolled in SNAP (formerly known as food stamps) have some help with paying for groceries, but during the school year, their kids are most likely receiving free or reduced breakfast and lunch at school. 

While this injustice is frustrating and saddening, you can help make a difference in the lives of families in our neighborhood. 

Through June 30, all donations up to $10,000 will be doubled, thanks to anti-hunger champions, Ted and Dawn Helwig for their match challenge. Every $1 = 16 meals. Make a difference with a gift, today.

The Friendship Center can provide a family with free fresh food and pantry items twice a month. There are no income requirements or address restrictions. We can also help families enroll in SNAP, Medicaid, and refer them to other local agencies for additional vital resources. 

Additionally, we need more friends to volunteer and help us serve the growing number of neighbors visiting the pantry every week. There are volunteer shifts every day of the week at various times. Sign in to the volunteer portal and select a time that works for your schedule.

We are grateful to be a part of a caring and generous community who seeks to alleviate hunger and help their neighbors whenever they can.

The Power of a Dollar

In today’s economy there is not much you can do with a dollar, let alone five dollars. It’s rare to afford a convenience meal or a drink from a coffee shop for $5 or less today too.

However, The Friendship Center has optimized our dollars making it possible for donated dollars to go further.

Through our food rescue program, we partner with local grocers: Jewel, Mariano’s, Tony’s Fresh Market, Costco, and GoPuff to receive a variety of items each week and prevent avoidable food waste. We receive a weekly order from the Greater Chicago Food Depository of canned items, fresh produce, dairy products, eggs, meat, and fish.

Supportive neighbors also host food drives and we receive donations from urban farms, gardens, and bakeries.

Due to the quantity of food that is donated to us every year, donated dollars are able to amplify the mission by supporting operating costs, providing access to vital resources and purchasing food.

At The Friendship Center, $1 = 8 meals

How the math breaks down: We take the total pounds of donated food we receive in a year and divide that by our operating expenses to distribute the food, and it comes out to 9.5 lbs per every dollar. Every meal is roughly 1.2 lbs.

When you donate to The Friendship Center, every dollar is being optimized to foster hope and dignity and provide access to food and vital resources to our neighbors facing hunger.

Give today to ensure our neighbors have access to fresh food and vital resources this year.

How To Start a Food Drive

Organizing a food drive can be simple and fun. Pick out a time frame to collect donations and pick a way to motivate your community to join you. Here are some ideas on how to start one.

  • Have your community drop off donations at your home.
  • Partner with your school to be a drop-off point for donations.
    You can borrow our food drive barrels to make the collection easier. 
  • Instead of asking for birthday presents, ask for donations for your food drive. 
  • Organize a food drive with your office. 
  • Ask a local grocery store to host our food drive barrels. 
  • Ask your place of worship to collect items during the holiday season. 

There are many more creative ways to host a food drive. 

Help your community understand what types of items to donate. Here is the list of what our neighbors commonly request:

  • Rice
  • Cooking oil
  • Peanut butter
  • Jelly
  • Soy sauce
  • Easy to cook pre-made meals
  • Canned meats
  • Stews
  • Soups
  • Diapers
    Personal hygiene products

When thinking about what to donate, please keep in mind if you wouldn’t give it to a friend, we shouldn’t give it to our neighbors. 

Lastly, pick a day you can bring the donations to The Friendship Center. 

Here is when we are open to accept donations:
Monday: 2 – 4 p.m.
Tuesday: 3 – 7 p.m.
Wednesday: 10 a.m. – 4 p.m.
Thursday: 2 – 7 p.m.
Friday: 2 – 6 p.m.
Saturday: 10 a.m. – 1 p.m.

If you have any questions before you get started, please call us at 773.907.6388 or email info@friendshipcenterchicago.org. We cannot accept food that is left outside.

Thanks for fighting hunger by feeding your neighbors.

Download our food drive toolkit to save this information for later.

Why Does Food Rescue Matter?

“I have some crates of milk  for you that we have too much of this week .” Brandon, the milkman, at our neighborhood Mariano’s is eager to provide our neighbors with the excess stock his store receives. 

Seth, our driver, visits stores throughout the city each morning to rescue excess food. From baked bread, vegetables, milk, eggs, meat, and everything in between, food rescued from grocery stores feeds our neighbors. 

Food rescue also creates a more sustainable supply chain. Grocers can forecast supply and demand at different times of the year however there is always some food that goes unsold. When stores donate fresh food and non-perishable items to The Friendship Center, they are eliminating excess food waste. 

“According to ReFED, 35% of food, or 80.6 million tons, goes uneaten or unsold in the United States – and most of that goes to waste.” (Feeding America, 2023). 

Food waste can also happen because of cosmetic issues like the item is too long, discolored, or oddly shaped, and retailers do not want to carry those items.

Additionally, the packaging could be mislabeled and missing the allergen information, so the items aren’t able to be sold in stores. Our network partner, Feeding America, is the only FDA-trusted organization with the ability to relabel food so that allergies can properly be listed and items can be donated to people facing hunger. 

Many manufacturers produce different types of products using the same machinery. It’s almost impossible to have some items not turn out correctly. For example, a plant that packages crunchy and creamy peanut butter will inevitably have a few batches that mix creamy and crunchy due to switching the type of consistency during production. Retailers do not want to carry these items as it can decrease customer satisfaction.

Cosmetic issues do not make food inedible. The network of food banks and pantries across the country can rescue these items from farmers, manufacturers, and retailers and redistribute them to the community. 

Check out this challenge from Feeding America to see if you can spot which food items would end up in a landfill instead of the grocery store. 

As a community, The Friendship Center partners with our neighborhood grocers to prevent healthy and fresh food from ending up in the trash and instead go to people who need it but cannot afford it. In the last twelve months we have rescued more than 500,000 lbs of wholesome food. To put that into perspective that is about a month of meals for 463 people! 

We are grateful to partner with Jewel #3262, Jewel #1282, Jewel #3442, Mariano’s #522, Mariano’s #515, Tony’s Fresh Market #567, Tony’s Fresh Market #1167, GoPuff #1, and Costco. We also continue to add new partnerships that will support our neighbors.

During Hunger Action Month we encourage you to fight hunger by partnering with us. $50 a month can feed a family of four and this month you can double your impact* thanks to a generous matching fund from John and Erin Telford. 

*All gifts up to $3,000 will be matched.

Double Your Impact