For Black History Month, the Food Bank is proud to spotlight a partner whose work aligns with our mission: ending hunger and creating a community free of its root causes, where everyone can access nutritious food of their choosing.
Ending hunger takes more than food. It takes trusted partners who authentically know their communities and show up for them week after week.
More than ten years ago, Veronica Shepard was with the San Francisco Department of Public Health when she and a colleague conducted food security screenings at Black churches across San Francisco. The results were stark: congregants were going hungry, and their pastors didn’t know.
“These pastors learned their own congregants were hungry and they were blown away by the results,” Veronica says. “Food is relative to everything. You can be unhoused, but you still got to have food.”
That discovery united faith leaders across the city. In 2016, Veronica formed the San Francisco African American Faith-Based Coalition, bringing together faith leaders from across denominations to address food insecurity. The coalition supports some of San Francisco’s most food-insecure populations: Black and African American, Pacific Islander, Latinx, and Middle Eastern and Black Muslim communities.
Each December, the coalition distributes food through Feeding 5,000, reaching more than 22,700 households since the pandemic began. But the work continues year-round. “Hunger is not just a holiday event,” Veronica says. “Hunger is every day.”
A native San Franciscan, Veronica grew up in Bayview Hunters Point during the civil rights movement and carries that history with her. “I know there’s strength in numbers,” she says. “Just like then, we’re working to make justice happen today.”
She reflects on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s speech to the Medical Committee for Human Rights. In it, he stated: “Injustice in health is the most shocking and the most inhuman.”
Veronica names hunger for what it really is: a symptom of deeper structural issues. “If we don’t address the root cause of hunger, which is poverty,” she explains, “we are failing to confront the structural injustice that keeps our community in a cycle of need. Without addressing the underlying poverty, the cycle of inequity remains unbroken.”
The Food Bank works with 265 community partners across San Francisco and Marin to end hunger. When communities lead, the work becomes real. That’s what we see in Veronica and the San Francisco African American Faith-Based Coalition. We’re grateful to walk alongside them.
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