The SAFE Story
30,000+
Meals distributed through our food pantries.
221
Children had enough food to eat each weekend thanks to our backpack program.
60,000+
Pounds of fresh produce distributed to our community.
Nearly 1,000
Visits to our nurse clinics.
Our Mission
Our mission is to empower individuals and strengthen families by respectfully and compassionately providing food assistance, developing relationships, identifying needs beyond food, and seeking solutions to those needs.
The History of SAFE
SAFE was founded in 2013 as Southern Alamance Family Empowerment in response to the growing needs of individuals and families facing poverty in southern Alamance County, North Carolina. We met a small group of families through food-assistance and connected them with the resources to get them past the barriers that brought them to us in need, but our original mission of empowering our community through food quickly shifted when the largest food pantry in the area closed without notice. What began as a small, community-led effort to address the root causes of poverty through empowerment, connection, and dignity-centered support quickly evolved into emergency food relief.
We have served the needs of our food insecure neighbors well for over a decade, growing from 16 families in 2013 to over 3,500 families in 2024. In 2022, we decided it was time to move back into our original mission of empowerment as it was obvious that a top-down approach does not address the root causes of food insecurity. So, in 2022, we began to expand our services based on what clients were telling us, barriers such as poor health, lack of access to transportation, and educational gaps were keeping families stuck in cycles of hardship, we did this while continuing to offer food-assistance at the same level. SAFE has steadily grown into a comprehensive family empowerment center.
Over the past few years, SAFE has expanded to two full-service food pantry locations, added nursing clinics, partnered with local schools and colleges, and developed a network of support that includes trauma-informed care, community health services, and educational outreach. In 2023, SAFE launched a second pantry to meet growing demand, resulting in a 243% increase in household reach. SAFE also introduced SNAP-matching farmers markets and new outreach tools through UNC’s School of Social Work and NCCares360 to connect clients with additional resources.
Today, SAFE remains committed to dignity, community engagement, and long-term solutions to poverty. Our mission, providing compassionate food assistance while connecting individuals
to broader supports continues to drive all programming.