Building Purchase Will Help Loaves & Fishes Grow Its CARES Programs

A food charity in Naperville, Illinois, has bought a building right next to its grocery market to grow a set of programs that help families with much more than food. The group, called Loaves & Fishes Community Services, purchased the building at 1879 High Grove Lane. The new space will give staff more room to meet privately with clients, hold classes, and offer health screenings and vaccines. Leaders say some parts of the building will be ready to use as soon as this month, with the full space open by 2027.

Loaves & Fishes runs a set of services called CARES programs. These programs help people with things like paying emergency bills, learning English, finding jobs, filing taxes, and even getting a car for transportation. The need for this kind of support has stayed the same or grown over time, according to President and CEO Mike Havala. He said that more and more clients are dealing with several problems at once, making their situations harder to handle.

The new building will make a big difference for the people Loaves & Fishes serves. Right now, staff and clients do not always have enough private space to talk about personal issues. With the new building, there will be more quiet rooms for one-on-one meetings, more space for group classes, and more parking for people visiting the market next door. 'Having additional space for our CARES programs will help us serve more clients,' Havala said.

Loaves & Fishes helps about 10,000 people every week across four Illinois counties: DuPage, Kane, Kendall, and Will. In its most recent fiscal year, the organization handed out nearly $845,000 in emergency financial help. It also saw a 56.5 percent jump in the number of clients who came in for health screenings and vaccine clinics. Those numbers show just how much the community depends on these services.

The building purchase is part of a larger fundraising effort called the Nourish Together campaign, which has a goal of raising $15 million. That money is also being used to expand a food storage facility in Aurora, Illinois. Workers are currently adding 32,000 square feet to the Aurora Food Distribution Hub so it can store more food. Both projects are meant to help the charity serve even more people in the years ahead.

Fundraising is still ongoing to keep both projects moving forward. Havala said the new Naperville building is a great step because it sits right next door to the food market the charity has run for many years. He believes that having food help and personal support in the same area will make a real difference for families in need. 'By expanding our capacity for both healthy food and wraparound support,' Havala said, 'we can help more people move from hunger toward stability and, ultimately, toward thriving.'