Planting Seeds - Food & Farming News from CDFA

Community Food Bank embodies the spirit of giving

Community Food Bank Blog ImageBy Andy Souza, CEO, Community Food Bank

This is a time when so many of us are thankful for good food, great friends, and our families as we celebrate the holiday season.  But for families having a difficult time making ends meet, it’s hard to share this joy when you’re not sure where your family’s next meal will come from.  Unfortunately, this is a reality facing one in four families throughout our communities.

Anyone can fall on hard times. The Community Food Bank is here to make sure that residents in our communities have a place to turn to when times are tough. We provide food to more than 200 agencies in Fresno, Madera, Kings, Kern and Tulare Counties and serve over 280,000 people each month. That equates to over 38 million pounds of food served in fiscal year 2015 – nearly a pound for every resident of California.

Community Food Bank offers several programs to provide access to food, especially healthy food, to our neighbors in need. We offer Pantry locations throughout our five county service area and we provide USDA Commodities distributions in Fresno County. Our Neighborhood Market and Mobile Pantry programs provide fresh produce and other food items in farmer’s market style distributions; our Backpack program provides 700 elementary school aged children with a backpack full of high-quality food to last throughout the weekend and our Nutrition on Wheels education program offers nutrition education to at-risk populations

Community Food Bank is successful because of the compassion and generosity of our partners in agriculture, business, and government as well as our many individual donors and volunteers. Next month we’re honored to host an event that will feature CDFA Secretary Karen Ross, and others, who will speak to the importance of your donations and why the giving spirit will prevail this year. Please consider making a donation today to Community Food Bank or your local food bank! Donate Here

This post is part of a series highlighting the efforts of Food Banks around California. On December 16th, Secretary Ross will participate in an event at the Community Food Bank in Fresno highlighting donations from agricultural producers to food banks and encourage farmers, ranchers and other Californians to give this holiday season. See her blog post here.

This entry was posted in Food Access and tagged . Bookmark the permalink.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *