Issaquah Valley Community Services, otherwise known as Issaquah Food and Clothing Bank has been in operation since 1982.
Our mission statement:
IVCS provides food and clothing and related services to individuals and families who find themselves in need of basic necessities. We strive to help people remain self-sufficient in their community and to maintain a sense of individual worth and dignity.
The Food and Clothing Bank addresses the most basic needs of food and clothing. We provide free food and clothing every week to households who find themselves in need. The food bank supplements 2-3 days of a families weekly food needs. We guarantee a nutritional bag of food: bread, produce and a variety of other canned and packaged food items and toiletries. We provide government commodities to those in our service area. Our clients are able to shop in our clothing bank once a week, which is set up like a clothing store. We service a wide area: Carnation, Snoqualmie, North Bend, Redmond, Fall City, Sammamish, Renton, Maple Valley, Preston, Hobart, Ravensdale and, of course, Issaquah. We also provide a delivery system in which we deliver food to housebound seniors and families.
As a referral agency, we make thousands of referrals a year, providing a system for which those who access the food and clothing bank will become aware of other agencies or organizations who may be able to help meet other needs, such as: food stamp awareness, school lunch programs, DSHS, educational opportunities, job referrals, health issues, domestic abuse, shelters and various other services.
We have two major programs that we sponsor every year. This past year we provided over 900 new back to-school backpacks filled with the necessary school supplies. We were able to take care of all our needy school children. This program has been so successful that other agencies are trying to set up one just like ours. In our Christmas Basket Program we seek to find sponsors to adopt a family. They then provide a traditional Christmas dinner and buy gifts that the clients have written on a wish list. We also have giving trees throughout town to provide gifts for children and seniors that have not been adopted. We have a birthday toy bank to provide gifts for children's birthdays and other special occasions when our clients cannot afford to buy them for their children.
We provide emergency assistance to individuals and families facing temporary crisis situations such as loss of job, illness, domestic violence, etc.
We serve many individuals ranging from seniors supplementing their incomes, the mentally ill and/or disabled living on limited incomes, the working poor to the under educated, under trained, welfare recipients who are losing or experiencing reduction of their benefits and are having to take low paying jobs. Our senior clients have worked their whole lives and never had to use any kind of assistance but have reached a point where their social security and pensions are not adequate to pay their household expenses, medicines and taxes. This group has a difficult time securing employment and the cost of living keeps rising. The mentally ill and/or disabled who are using our services are living on limited incomes and have a hard time securing employment also. They may require long-term assistance to supplement their income. Clients may also be in a crisis situation due to a medical cost, poor health, job loss, abandonment by spouse or partner, abuse and delinquency of child support payments. Our concerns range from clients who are being required through welfare reform to take low-paying jobs with very little hope for advancement, affordable daycare, transportation issues, high cost of living, low wages, lack of adequate job training and lack of affordable housing.
