The Meridian Food Bank began in 1999 as a part of Valley Shepherd Nazarene Church. At that time the Food Bank was called the Valley Shepherd Nazarene Compassionate Ministries Center. It was located in a house across the street from Valley Shepherd that was referred to as the Hepper Home. This house was donated to the church by an elderly lady and it was her desire that the church should use it for some purpose that would be for the good of the community—thus the Compassionate Ministries Center was born. At this point the center offered food baskets to families and individuals, free clothing, and also a room to sleep in and a shower.

            In 2003, Valley Shepherd realized the need for a larger building and moved the Compassionate Ministries Center into the building next to the youth center behind the Sunrise Cafe. At that point, they discontinued giving out clothing because food was deemed more important and other organizations in the area were more adept at distributing clothes. When the compassion center was moved into the new building, the church also went through the process of filing the paperwork to make the center its own non-profit organization under section 501c3 of the IRS code. This allowed us to apply for government grants to purchase more food and it also allowed people from the community to give tax-deductible donations.

            In 2005, we went through yet another set of changes. First of all, we decided to partner with the Church of the Holy Nativity which had started its own food bank in 2002. There had been some confusion in the past with donations; some donations that were meant for us went to them and vice versa. So, in order to simplify things we joined forces and united under one name as the Meridian Food Bank, still using the current facility next to the Valley Shepherd youth center. We were also joined by the Optimist Club who turned their Thanksgiving donations over to our facility. Another blessing was that Acorn Storage donated two storage units for us to use for free to store extra non-perishable food supplies.

            The overall reason the Meridian Food Bank came into existence was that churches in the area recognized the growing need in a growing city. According to the government census, the population of Meridian was 9,596 in 1990, grew to 34, 919 in 2000, and as of 2006 is 59, 832 (http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/). This was a fairly rapid growth and, while there are plenty of jobs available in the Treasure Valley, a lot of them are minimum or low wage jobs that make it difficult to support a family and keep food on the table. Our goal is to help individuals and families in this situation and make a positive impact on our community.