We use 4 hours a month 48 hours a year to love our society, welcome to donate food to our center, your kind contribution will help the poor needy families.

HOL448 Food Bank (Johor) began with a concept of a group of volunteers-by volunteering 4 hours a month and thus 48 hours a year to help the community. In July 2015, HOL448 Volunteers was established. In the past two years, 448 Movement has influenced and encouraged more than 330 volunteers to participate. At the same time, around 140 families have been helped.

Through Food Bank, HOL448 Volunteers raise food from the public, keep at the store and distribute to the families in need every month. The condition that the families face varies, including losing a spouse, family members having serious illness, elderly living alone, single mother with children struggling to survive, losing income suddenly due to certain reasons, and having an income of below RM1500. The timely help that our volunteers offer help them to survive through a difficult period and give them enough support to resume independence.

Current goals and challenges

As mentioned above, although HOL448 Food Bank (Johor) has already helped over 140 families, but we still need financial support to build better facility to address the ever increasing needs. Below are some challenges we face and the items that require long term support from the community.

1. We need to build a better and more spacious store room.The current temporary depot is narrow with limited space.

2. We need consistent food supply. For the moment, the food supply is not consistent. Volunteers need to fetch the food from Klang headquarter to Johor, or raise the food through social media and whatsapp groups.

3.We need to recruit more volunteers in order to widen our food distribution coverage area. Although we do have a batch of volunteers who participate regularly, but we must increase the number of volunteers if we wish to expand the coverage area. Due to limited manpower, sometimes we need to reject the application from the families which are not in our coverage area. These families include orphans, widow, stay-alone elderly and disabled people.

4. We need short term and long term sponsors. The consistency of food supply ensures timely assistance for the needy families, and acts as a foundation for Food Bank to operate continuously. Food Bank welcomes philanthropic merchants and business owners to become our sponsor, and invites generous individuals and organizations to become our regular donors.

5.We need to employ admin staff. The operation of Food Bank which includes accounting, management, receival of goods, food distribution, stock count, finance, contact, coordination, record, printing, evaluation and other tedious tasks are all in charge by a few volunteers. It is hoped that an admin staff can be employed in the future to focus on handling all the admin work.

6.We need to buy a van. If the financial condition allows, Food Bank intends to buy a van for ministry purpose. The current transport arrangement is done by the volunteers themselves, for example driving their own cars to take the food from sponsors.

In order to provide timely assistance to the needy families, set up better facility, and maintain sustainable operation of Food Bank, we welcome all kind of support regarding the items mentioned above. Interested donors and volunteers can contact 016-2417 448 to enquire.