Our History — In the fall of 2002 The New York Times ran a series of articles on poverty in the U.S. One of those articles described the township of Pembroke, Illinois, a community so poor that many houses had dirt floors and there were tires on the roofs to keep them from blowing away.

After reading that article, Pam Koner, a Westchester, New York mom and entrepreneur knew she had to do something to help.

With the simple idea of linking families with more to families with less, Koner contacted an outreach worker in Pembroke and asked what was needed most. The answer was food. So Koner wrote down the names of 17 of the neediest Pembroke families, convinced 16 friends and neighbors to join her, and Family-to-Family was born.

Each donating family began sending monthly boxes of food (and letters) to “their” families. 17 families soon grew to 60 . . . and after a flurry of media exposure (including coverage by CBS News, The New York Times, Oprah and Reader’s Digest) 60 families grew to over 700 families linked to each other.

Family-to-Family now serves 13 mostly forgotten, impoverished rural communities throughout the U.S.