Thanks to the generous residents and helpful volunteers of Rancho Solano for holding their 16th Annual Food Drive, Thanksgiving in June.
They collected 2,351 pounds of food for the Food Bank! We are especially appreciative for the generous donation, since food donations tend to decrease down during the summer months.
From May 11th – June 15th, 2016 the Northern California Leadership Succession Program (LSP) sponsored a District-wide canned food drive and collected cash donations to benefit the Food Bank of Contra Costa and Solano. With the support of our projects and the District Office, the food drive gathered 1,473 cans of food and raised $2,412.44. Kiewit gave a matching donation of $1500.
On Thursday, June 16th, LSP members participated in the “Kiewit CAN Build” Competition where 3 teams competed by building structures made entirely out of canned food. The theme was “Engineering Marvels”. Money raised during the Food Drive was used to purchase supplemental canned goods for the competition. In less than 2 hours, each team created an amazing structure – the Hoover Dam and Bridge, the Eiffel Tower, and AT&T Park.
Each structure was judged in accordance with the competition specifications. A panel of juror’s awarded structures for the “Best Use of Labels”, for “Structural Ingenuity”, and as the “Jurors’ Favorite”. District Office staff had the opportunity to vote for the “People’s Choice” Award.
The event was a great success and resulted in the donation of 3741 cans of food (3748 lbs pounds) and $978.58 to the Food Bank of Contra Costa and Solano Counties. This well exceeded our goal of 2,000 cans.
Special thanks to the Kiewit/Cherne staff, craft, clients, and partners who donated cash or cans, Safeway, Costco, and the “Kiewit CAN Build” Teams! Thank you also to crews from the Crystal Springs Bridge Project and Vallejo Yard for building and demobilizing platforms for the event.
2016 Northern CA LSP Members (L-R):
Michael Douthit, Erin Estenson, Ryan Enneking, Steve Mendoza, Pablo Chavarria, Frank Salhab, Garrett Smith, Sam Nasser, Mark Berns, Rita Encarnacion-Malixi, Jeremiah Henry, Scott Williams, Brandon Risso, Leo Estenson, Stephanie Weldon, Peter Weiss, Matt Jansen
AT&T Park (765 cans)
Brandon Risso, Stephanie Weldon*, Matt Jansen, Peter Weiss, Leo Estenson
Award: “Best Use of Labels”
“Eiffel Tower” (950 cans)
Frank Salhab, Garrett Smith, Sam Nasser, Scott Williams, Jeremiah Henry, Rita Encarnacion-Malixi*
Award: “Jurors’ Favorite”
“Hoover Dam and Bridge” (1300 cans)
Michael Douthit, Erin Estenson, Steve Mendoza, Pablo Chavarria, Mark Berns, Ryan Enneking*
Award: “Structural Ingenuity” and “People’s Choice”
Originally posted in the Vacaville Reporter: The 24th annual Letter Carriers’ Stamp Out Hunger Food Drive will be taking place on Saturday, May 14.
The Food Bank of Contra Costa and Solano is busy preparing for this largest one-day national food drive of the year.
Be on the lookout for a postcard in your mailbox from your letter carrier asking you to put out a bag of food to share with your neighbors in need. Letter carriers work extremely hard on this day to make it as easy as possible for you to help the food-insecure members of our community.
To participate in this event, all you need to do is leave a bag of nonperishable food by your mailbox prior to your regular Saturday mail delivery. The food collected helps feed low-income children during the summer months when they are out of school and without access to free meals.
The Food Bank received over 181,000 pounds of food last year from this drive; more than 70 million pounds of food was collected nationwide. To accommodate the volume of incoming food, we place our Food Bank vehicles strategically throughout the community to serve as collection sites for the letter carriers. Safeway and Lucky Supermarkets also help out by lending us their trailers to act as additional collection locations.
To make this event a success, the Food Bank reaches out to the community for help in processing these donations. We get assistance from businesses, service clubs and faith communities.
On the Monday morning after the food drive, we unload cardboard bins of canned goods into our warehouse. These collapsible bins are triple-stacked and fill our warehouse. Our volunteer groups lend a helping hand by sorting food into a variety of categories including canned vegetables, canned fruit, ready-to-eat meals and a dozen other categories.
After the food is sorted, we are able to distribute it to the 180 agencies we serve.
We are thankful to be a part of this monumental community effort. We appreciate the hard-working letter carriers, the support of the grocery stores and the numerous volunteer groups. But none of this would be possible if it weren’t for everyday citizens willing to share some food with their neighbors in need.
We are part of a generous caring community who understands that no one in this country should ever go hungry.
Please mark your calendar, set a reminder on your phone or put a string around your finger… whatever it takes to remind you to participate in this crucial food drive!
Something as easy as sharing some food staples like peanut butter, hearty soups, dried or canned beans, grains, tuna or canned fruits and vegetables can mean the world to hungry families.
The author is executive director of the Food Bank of Contra Costa and Solano, based in Concord. Email: info@foodbankccs.org.
Do you want to help the Food Bank AND increase awareness of all the good being done in your community?
On Tuesday, May 3, 2016, the Food Bank of Contra Costa and Solano will be participating in Give Local Solano, a one-day national event organized by Give Local America in an effort to build a culture of philanthropy. The Solano Community Foundation, the Food Bank and 28 other local nonprofits will participate in this online day of giving that brings community members together for 24 hours.
Giving to the Food Bank couldn’t be easier. From 12:00 AM to 11:59 PM on May 3, just go to GiveLocalSolano.org and look for the Food Bank of Contra Costa and Solano on the Leaderboard, or under Human Services. If you want a shortcut, just use this link to go directly to our page.
Not only will you help Food Bank programs in Solano County with your donation, all gifts will be partially matched by local corporations. The more donations the Food Bank receives through Give Local Solano, the higher our share of the match!
Please mark your calendars for Give Local Solano on May 3. This is the day when we can all join together and help our community by supporting the Food Bank.
P.S. You can give to Give Local Solano no matter where you live. Contra Costans and friends or family from all over the world are just a mouse click away.
As 2015 comes to a close, the Food Bank of Contra Costa and Solano is in dire need of your help. We need to reach our $3 million dollar holiday fundraising goal in order to continue normal operation. If you haven’t given already, would you consider doing so now?
Typically the end of the year is our busiest time for financial contributions. However, the holidays have come and gone and the Food Bank is currently $400,000 behind in monetary donations.
Please help us continue services in 2016! Because the Food Bank already operates in an extremely efficient manner, with 96 cents of every dollar going directly to food programs, a budget shortfall would result in less food for our neighbors in need. We don’t want to have to turn anyone away.
Every little bit truly does make a difference. For every dollar you donate, the Food Bank can provide enough food for two meals.
You can help ensure all of our work in the community will continue in 2016 by donating by midnight on December 31st at www.foodbankccs.org/holidays.
Thank you for your support.
Originally posted on the Vacaville Reporter: It is common to dread turning forty, but we at the Food Bank of Contra Costa and Solano are proud of what we have accomplished as we turn the big 4-0. Today marks the 40th anniversary that our incorporation documents were filed.
To honor our 40th birthday, generous donors came together to make up the Friends of the Fortieth Fund. They contributed $40,000 to be used as a matching fund for other donors. In short, if community members rally together to contribute $40,000, we will actually receive $80,000 because of the dollar-for-dollar match.
What does this mean to the food-insecure people we serve? Since we are able to provide two meals for every dollar we receive, your donations (along with the matching funds) will allow us to provide 160,000 meals to children and seniors in our community.
The concept of a local food bank started with a borrowed Safeway trailer, parked in a church parking lot, and two employees who had access to trucks. When people applying for government assistance programs ran into delays, eligibility workers would refer them to these pantries to obtain emergency food.
At the beginning, we were providing food to 19 emergency food pantries. We now serve almost 200 pantries and 1 in 8 residents.
We are no longer an agency exclusively providing short-term assistance. We still support pantries that assist people on an emergency basis, but we also are an essential part of the ongoing community response to hunger.
We have developed specific programs that give food to low-income seniors and low-income children. We also make available donated food from the US Department of Agriculture to low-income people in Solano and Contra Costa counties. Our Community Produce Program provides fresh fruit and vegetables at clinics, churches and schools in low-income neighborhoods. We are part of a network that food-insecure people use to help provide for their families.
Our ongoing job is to continue providing food to people in need, while working to end hunger. What are some of the things we do to end hunger? We partner with governmental, philanthropic and other community-based programs to try to increase participation in the CalFresh program. We are working to help more children benefit from the School Lunch Program and Summer Meal Program. We engage the community and advocate at the Capitol so we can help everyone obtain the good nutrition they need to thrive.
Our founders knew that saving food from waste was a good idea. The same principle guides us today, as we see what food donations are available and determine how best to use them to meet the needs of the people we serve. However, food donations alone don’t cover the need within our community. We need to also purchase food in order to meet the demand. And you guessed it, purchasing food takes money.
If you are interested in making a donation to the Food Bank in honor of our 40th anniversary of serving the community, you can do so at www.foodbankccs.org/40for40.
We humbly thank our community members for your continued support during the past forty years.
The Concord Grocery Outlet store, located at 1840 Willow Pass Road in Concord, is pre-packaging bags of food for the Independence From Hunger Food Drive during the month of July. The price of the bags varies between $3 and $10 so everyone can buy a bag to donate to those in need in our community. So far they have collected 1,840 pounds and we want to help them get to 4,000 pounds by the end of July. Thanks to Grocery Outlet for their continued support of the Food Bank!
Help the Concord Grocery Outlet turn the empty barrel into a full barrel.
Originally posted on the Vacaville Reporter: When I was a child (a long time ago), the newspaper had a little box listing the number of days until Christmas. Maybe it was an advertisement paid for by retailers, but it certainly made me count down to the ultimate holiday. As an adult, it is amazing how fast the holidays sneak up on us. With that said, we are officially more than halfway to the 2015 holiday season.
Different wintertime holidays provide opportunities for introspection and celebration to honor important cultural events. The holidays are a time when people are most likely to take action in making a difference in their community. Generous people provide the Food Bank of Contra Costa and Solano with food donations, financial donations and volunteer hours.
If you looked at a graph of the Food Bank’s support month by month in all three areas, you’d see the enormous peaks in November and December.
The challenge for the Food Bank is that the people we serve are hungry every day. We assist food-insecure people all year long. We stretch the food we receive during the holidays as far as we are able.
However, we end up purchasing more food during the summer to offset the decline in food donations and food drives. The National Association of Letter Carriers helps us out by conducting a large-scale food drive in the spring.
We need this enthusiasm for hosting food drives year round from both big organizations and individuals wanting to make a difference.
Whether you want to host a food drive or drop nonperishable food off at an existing one, visit us at www.foodbankccs.org/fooddrive for more information.
There often is a spike in financial donations during the holidays from both corporations and individuals.
People want their neighbors to all have a good holiday meal. To help people receive proper nourishment all year long, we make it easy to donate on a monthly basis. To find out more about becoming a pledge donor, visit www.foodbankccs.org/donate.
Even though we expand our volunteer opportunities during the holidays, we often have to limit the number of groups we can safely accommodate because of the increased interest in volunteering. During the summer, we have more perishable fresh produce available to us than anytime of the year, so we need volunteers to help sort it in a timely manner.
In fact, an opportunity is coming up on Saturday, July 18, for families with young children, ages 5 and older, to volunteer. Our Fairfield warehouse is hosting its monthly Family Food Sort. Details and registration information are available at www.foodbanksccs.org/familyfoodsort.
The holiday season is a time for us to come together as families and as a unified community.
I often wish that the holiday spirit, especially the desire to help others, were with us throughout the year. The need to feed people in our community does not go away after the holidays. Why wait until November to take action? When people show the holiday spirit all year long, the gift they give is a strong and healthy community.
Originally posted on the Vacaville Reporter: The Food Bank of Contra Costa and Solano appreciates the many relationships that we have with the community. We depend on these alliances to help us achieve our mission.
The Food Bank relies on the individuals and organizations that donate food, so we can get it to those who need it the most. We value our partnerships with local nonprofit agencies, as they provide food to people who we don’t reach through direct distribution.
Because of the rapport we have with our volunteers, more than 80,000 hours of work is donated to our cause each year. And the connections we have with our financial donors allow us to effectively distribute more than 20 million pounds of food to those in need every year.
This year marks a milestone to celebrate these relationships as we acknowledge the 40th anniversary of the Food Bank’s work. We held our first annual Nourish gala on May 16 and this year we recognized 40 years of service. The event was held at Round Hill Country Club and we were joined by nearly 200 supporters. Donors were there from our lead corporate sponsor, Chevron, along with seventeen other corporate supporters. Roberta Gonzales, from KPIX CBS 5, was our emcee and raised the spirits of everyone in the room with her infectious energy. The enthusiasm Roberta generated was a great help when our fund raising auction began.
We began the live auction with my homemade lemon bars that I am “required” to make for every staff potluck at the Food Bank. They sold for $1,100, which made for an incredible beginning! We then auctioned off naming rights for one year to the sorting area in our Fairfield and Concord warehouses, generating $11,000.
The highlight of the live auction was when we came to the final item, “Feed the Need”. The Food Bank made the request for a new trailer to use to transport food. We asked attendees to contribute to the purchase of the trailer (building on the money generously donated the previous day in Valero’s skeet shoot fundraiser). Their response was amazing, and we raised more than $40,000! People gave because they wanted to make a difference; they wanted to help the Food Bank provide more food to those in need in our community. Through the generosity of those who supported our Nourish event, we raised more than $125,000 to help fight hunger in our community.
We also took a step forward in creating the Kris Lesher-Aring Giving Circle. These major donors will honor the memory of Kris Lesher-Aring who was involved in many philanthropic efforts before she passed away. Kris attended our 25th anniversary and spoke of her belief that there should not be hunger in a community as prosperous as ours. We know that many of our donors share her belief and this is a way to acknowledge those who give significant support to our efforts.
The gala was a time to acknowledge all that we have accomplished over the last 40 years and a time to look toward the future.
Originally posted on the Vacaville Reporter: The year was 1975. Gasoline cost $0.44 a gallon. The average cost of a home was $40,000. You could get a brand new car for $4,000. Even back then, although those prices seem like a bargain today, not everyone had enough food to get by. This is why the Food Bank of Contra Costa and Solano (then called the Community Food Coalition) formed and incorporated.
We were simply a group of people who were responding to the needs of our community. When someone applied for food stamps or other government assistance programs, there would often be delays in receiving benefits.
For people in that predicament, the eligibility worker would refer them to a local church or community center where they could get three days of food from local volunteer organizations. The Food Bank was created to help those organizations stretch their dollars by buying food in bulk and soliciting donations.
Little did we understand in 1975 the impact that the Food Bank would have in our community and how the need for food would grow.
Last year we provided over twenty million pounds of food to people in need in our local communities.
We work with nearly two hundred nonprofit service agencies and have a variety of direct service programs that bring food directly to low-income senior citizens, children and other people in need. We have a positive health impact on the people we serve because over half the food we distribute is fresh produce.
Everyone connected with the organization is incredibly proud of what we have been able to accomplish, but we struggle with using the term “celebration” to acknowledge our fortieth anniversary.
Some of us feel that it would truly be a cause for celebration if we didn’t have the need for food banks in a country that is as wealthy as the United States.
More importantly than looking back at what we’ve accomplished over the past 40 years, is the need to look forward. We need to focus on what needs to be done to get food in the hands of people who need it.
In addition to food donations, we need to raise money to pay the handling fees for the produce we distribute and for transporting it to our warehouse. We need to raise funds to pay for our trucks and drivers who bring the food to those we serve.
To honor 40 years of nourishing our community, we are holding a black-tie optional gala on Saturday, May 16. Nourish is our 1st annual Gala benefitting the Food Bank.
Money raised at the gala will help us accomplish the work we need to do in the coming years. For every dollar we receive, 0.96 goes directly to food programs.
If you would like to come to this dinner dance and auction fundraiser, visit www.foodbankccs.org/40th. On the web page you can RSVP to the event or make a donation if you want to help, but are unable to attend the gala.
Originally posted on the Vacaville Reporter: In 1975 Linda Locke worked in the Contra Costa County Social Service Department. When she was not able to sign a client up for food stamps because of missing paperwork, she would refer the person to the food room in a local faith community. Volunteers in those food rooms would provide the person in need with a three-day package of food to get by. Linda soon discovered that the food room inventory would run short before the end of the month. Being a resourceful type, Linda worked with her department, faith communities, food donors and obtained the loan of a trailer from Safeway. Using county trucks and two desks in a county office, the Food Bank of Contra Costa and Solano was born. Little did I suspect when I began working for the organization in March of 1976 that I would be writing an article today that celebrates the 40th anniversary of an incredible idea.
Beginning with the storage trailer and two staff members (I was the truck driver) we distributed just over 30,000 pounds of food to the food pantries in our first year. I would not have believed that forty years later we would have seventy people on our staff, 88,000 hours of volunteer time and would distribute twenty-million pounds of food in our community each year. I would not have guessed that half the food we give out would go through direct service programs, where we bring food to church parking lots or health clinics. Serving Contra Costa and Solano Counties, we provide food to a large geographic area. We continue to improve the service we provide to nearly two-hundred nonprofit agencies. It is essential for us to make the food we provide easily accessible to the people in need. With half of the food we distribute being fresh fruit and vegetables, it’s critical that we distribute the perishable produce in a quick and efficient manner so individuals can benefit from the added nutrition.
The first fundraising effort we made was applying for a grant from the Presbyterian Church to buy food for the pantries we served. Today we continue raising money so we can provide food, including fresh produce, to the people we serve. Through the generous support of many significant donors, we have a matching fund up to $100,000 for those who make a donation to honor and acknowledge our forty years of nourishing our community. It is a different world than it was forty years ago, but hunger is still part of our community and people need food every day. These financial contributions to honor our forty years of service will help our neighbors in need.
Originally posted on the Vacaville Reporter: We want to thank everyone for the incredible community support during the holidays, helping the Food Bank of Contra Costa and Solano exceed our six million meal goal. The community donated over 600,000 pounds of food and enough funds to provide over 8,500,000 meals throughout the year! So many groups contributed, including shoppers at local grocery stores, banks, credit unions, Scouts, realtors, schools and county employees.
Some of the grocery stores we work with put together bags of food that give us our most-needed food (tuna, peanut butter, pasta and pasta sauce). They priced these bags at $10 or so and made it an easy donation for a shopper who wanted to make a difference. The Safeway stores in Solano County, for example, donated nearly 19,000 pounds of food this last holiday season, because Safeway made it easy for their shoppers to give.
Families like Angel and Lisa have already benefited from the fantastic community support during the holidays. Lisa is on dialysis and needed help with groceries. They attended a distribution at a Food Bank partner agency where they received a turkey and groceries for the holidays. Thanks to you, Angel spent the holidays with family and “ate lots of food!”
The number of people the Food Bank of Contra Costa and Solano provides food to has increased more than 25% in the last two years. In fact, one in eight residents now relies on the Food Bank. Hunger exists in every corner of our community and affects people of all ages, ethnicities, education levels and employment status. The economy may be getting better, but for far too many in our community that has not yet translated into an income level that can keep food on the table.
Last year, the Food Bank provided the equivalent of 16 million meals to your neighbors in need; more than half of the food was fresh produce. With the help we received during the holidays, we can project another year of meeting the high need.
To help feed a neighbor in need, contact the Food Bank of Contra Costa and Solano at www.foodbankccs.org or 855-309-FOOD.
info@foodbankccs.org
PO Box 6324
Concord, CA 94524
Concord Location
P: 925-676-7543
F: 925-671-7933
Fairfield Location
P: 707-421-9777
F: 707-421-0205
