The Ozaukee Food Alliance is a non-profit organization providing warm meals, groceries, school supplies, and support to families in need in Ozaukee County. The number of families served has grown tremendously since we opened our doors in 2012. In the first month of operation, the pantry helped 23 families. Today, we serve over 300 families a month and help over 2400 unique individuals a year. Ozaukee Food Alliance has created a shopping experience for our families to allow them to choose the foods that work best for their family and any dietary needs they may have. Outside of the needs of the pantry we provide a free meal site, holiday meal boxes, drive-up pantries, a Back 2 School Fair and a Back Pack Fridays Program in the Port Washington / Saukville School District, all to help meet the need where it is in a way that is comfortable for our patrons.
The Ozaukee Food Alliance started when Mark Gierach’s youth group from St. Peters United Church of Christ (now Parkside Community UCC) asked, on their 2010 mission trip to Cleveland, OH, “Why don’t we have something like this in Saukville?” Two adults and twelve youth ranging from 8th to 12th grades were on their first mission trip, working in soup kitchens, food pantries, and community gardens in Cleveland. The youth on the trip were inspired as were the adults and when the question was raised the response was, they said, “Yes, why don’t we?” They came back to Saukville and found there was in fact a food pantry here, located in the rectory at Immaculate Conception Catholic Church. They made a connection with that pantry to help, working on their Thanksgiving and Christmas box programs. Over time, as more people began to use the pantry, it was moved from the church rectory to the lower level at St. Peter’s so it could be expanded. A new 501c3 was formed with a new board of directors to oversee the program and it was named the Saukville Community Food Pantry. The intent was to meet the needs of anyone in Ozaukee County that had a food shortage in their home or had an emergency food need.
Our original board of directors was made up of members from several churches from Ozaukee County, including St. Peter’s UCC, Immaculate Conception Catholic Church, River of Life Lutheran Church, and First Immanuel Lutheran Church. 
The pantry opened its doors to its first customers on January 5th, 2012. In the first month, the pantry served a total of 20 families from a few boxes of canned goods on top of several tables. Fast-forward to 2017, and that same pantry served an average of 105 families per month and a total of 314 families with 763 people that made a total of 1,776 visits to the pantry. The pantry provided just over 49 tons of food to those families. In 2013, the Saukville Community Food Pantry began offering a back to school fair, furnishing school supplies, backpacks, and shoes to hundreds of children in Ozaukee County so they could begin the school year with all the tools needed to succeed. They also continued the tradition from the early days at Immaculate Conception of offering special holiday meal boxes at Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter. In 2014, the Pantry began offering a free Community Meal site once a month adding a second date in 2017. They served an average of 35 to 50 persons each time the meal site was open.
In 2015, the pantry began a new program, with the cooperation of Feeding America, offering a “Mobile Food Pantry” twice yearly where Feeding America provides a truck full of fresh foods, dry goods, and frozen foods for those in need. Since the beginning, over 250 families came to those events. Saukville Community Food Pantry as always found ways to meet the need wherever it found it, and Ozaukee Food Alliance has continued that tradition, finding ways to to build on connections in the community to do more to alleviate food insecurity.