The Outreach Program

Floyd Hammer and Kathy Hamilton were preparing for retirement, back in 2003. When at the request of friends, the Union, Iowa, couple participated in a volunteer mission to Tanzania to help renovate a leprosy hospital to include an HIV/AIDS clinic and care facility. On their return trip in January of 2004– during the third year of a nationwide drought – the couple saw children suffering, and dying, from malnutrition. Floyd and Kathy expanded their volunteer work to help fight starvation. After bartering maize for baskets in Nkungi Village, they founded Outreach Program, a nonprofit that has distributed more than 300 million free meals to children in more than 15 countries.

Based in Union and Des Moines, IA, Outreach Program is a non-profit 501 (c)(3) corporation that organizes food packaging events around the country. With more than 300 million meals packaged to date, the organization’s mission is to provide food, safe water, education, and medical care to those in need at home and abroad.