On a Friday morning in early December, volunteers load fresh produce into car trunks at North Marin Community Services (NMCS) in Novato. The 43-day government shutdown, the longest in our nation’s history, ended weeks earlier, but the San Francisco-Marin Food Bank’s emergency food distributions continued.

The shutdown had cut off CalFresh benefits — California’s SNAP program — for 125,000 people across San Francisco and Marin, while leaving thousands of federal workers without paychecks. Both groups were still catching up on bills, with no relief in sight.

Working with partners throughout the region, the Food Bank launched its Shutdown Community Response to quickly get fresh, nutritious food to the people who needed it most. Twenty-four community partners and 7,000 volunteers stepped up to meet the surge in need. An unprecedented public-private partnership distributed more than $14.3 million in direct purchasing power to 67,597 San Franciscans.

By the end, the response delivered 1.1 million extra pounds of food, providing 800,000 meals to households that would have otherwise gone without.

Neighbors Helping Neighbors

“When we put out a call for help, we knew our community would answer,” said Paul Russell, director of operations at NMCS.

“NMCS started to get calls directly from the community saying, ‘I hear this is happening. I’m concerned my neighbors are going to go without food. What can we bring for you that will be helpful for them?'”

They showed up in droves. Valerie, a retired nurse who has volunteered at the Novato pantry every Tuesday since 2020, drove up from Mill Valley for the extra Friday distribution.

“People don’t ask for hard times,” she said, “but hard times happen when you don’t expect it and you aren’t prepared for it.”

In just one month, NMCS received approximately 12 pallets of donated food from neighbors, schools, churches, and businesses, complementing the fresh produce NMCS distributes through the Food Bank’s Neighborhood Food Network. Together, the Food Bank and NMCS added emergency Friday distributions to supplement the regular Tuesday pantry, serving 60 to 70 households each week.

“It Was Absolutely Horrifying”

Among them was Jennie, who has relied on the pantry at NMCS for seven years. Living alone in Novato, she depends on it and her CalFresh benefits to make ends meet. Without the pantry, the cost of groceries alone would be overwhelming.

“Sometimes it just comes down to dollars and cents,” she said. “It’s 10 bucks for this, eight bucks for that… it could be $50 a week.”

When the shutdown cut her benefits, she faced an impossible choice between paying rent and buying groceries.

“It was absolutely horrifying,” Jennie said. “None of us knew when they were going to come back.”

The extra Friday distributions kept Jennie afloat while her CalFresh benefits were paused. They’ve since been reinstated, but she knows that plenty of people in her community are still struggling with food insecurity.

For Jennie, though, the pantry has become more than a place to pick up groceries. It’s where she sees her community show up for each other.

“If I’m just feeling really depressed and I come here, it really helps my mood ” she said. “Just seeing the people get the food and that makes me happy.”

The Mission Continues

After nearly six years volunteering with the Food Bank (and through two unprecedented emergencies), Valerie saw firsthand how hunger touches every corner of her community.

“I see all the faces of people who do experience food insecurity, and it’s all walks of life,” she said. “Seniors, and I’m a senior now. I just can relate. It could be me.”

For Jennie, Valerie, and Russell, the shutdown made one thing clear: hunger is a policy choice. With billions in SNAP cuts on the horizon, the threats to food security aren’t going away. But neither is the community that showed up.

Over those two months, Russell saw the proof of community in the parking lot.

“The fact that I look right in front of me and I see pallets of food that have been brought in as a response from neighbors, from schools, from churches, businesses,” he said.

“Everyone came to us right away. And it was gratifying that they saw us as the organization that’s going to respond.”

When the safety net fails, partnerships between the Food Bank and organizations like NMCS — fueled by volunteers like Valerie and neighbors who refuse to let anyone go hungry — hold people up.

“The mission is just so necessary, especially now,” Valerie said.

Jennie is in agreement.

“There’s so many horrible things happening in the world that I try to create joy and beauty and observe it whenever I can,” she said. “This [place] is one of those little nuggets.”

On the Webster-Eddy food pantry’s opening morning, Japantown was cool and foggy, typical for San Francisco summer. Neighbors lined up along the chain link fence, eager to pick up fresh fruits and vegetables within walking distance of their homes. San Francisco-Marin Food Bank volunteers buzzed with first-day jitters, but operations ran smoothly under lead volunteer Katie’s steady hand. 

She kept her cool through the bustle, checking in with Food Bank staff to confirm registration was ready and guiding volunteers on where unboxed produce should go. Katie even found time to set up a hand-lettered sign with the pantry’s name, a small touch that made the site feel welcoming from the start. 

Her commitment to helping her community started long before that morning.  

As a child, Katie’s mom encouraged her and her siblings to volunteer at their hometown food bank, planting the seed for a lifelong passion for giving back. About five years after moving to San Francisco, she felt compelled to spring into action again during the COVID-19 pandemic, when the Food Bank launched Pop-Up Pantries across the city in response to surging need. 

Those early days, she remembers, were hectic but vital for her neighbors. “It was busy, but it was really great,” Katie says. “A lot of people were getting access to food who hadn’t had it before.” 

When Katie learned that Pop-Up Pantries would be closing due to funding cuts, she and her fellow volunteers worried about where their neighbors would turn for food. Instead of walking away, they decided to act. 

“We were disappointed and just asked, ‘Hey, what would it take to keep this going?’” she recalls. 

With the Food Bank’s guidance and a church partner providing space, Katie helped lead the effort to create a permanent food pantry. 

“Food is a basic need,” she says. “Everyone should have access to food. It’s important to me to be able to support that.” 

While she’s grateful to be able to meet the urgent need she sees now, she’s also thinking about the future: Congress voted to slash $186 billion from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) over the next decade, and the weight of those cuts is already being felt. 

“I think the one that’s really tough for me to understand is cutting food access,” Katie says. “Most people, if you talk to them, would say they support people having access to food. The thing that’s unfortunate is seeing politics hamper that. A lot of people don’t understand that cutting dollars to food banks means people will not be eating. This isn’t just stuff happening in Washington, D.C. These are decisions affecting my town, my city, my block, my neighbors.” 

Despite her frustration, Katie remains hopeful. She believes her neighbors want to help, and that once they move past the fear of committing to something, they’ll feel proud of their impact. She also sees group volunteer opportunities, like those at the Food Bank, as a way to ease the pressure. 

“If you know you won’t be alone, it’s a lot less scary,” she says. “And what’s the worst that can happen? Even if it doesn’t go perfectly, you’ve still helped more people than if you did nothing.” 

 That belief is one of the many reasons Katie keeps showing up without fail.  

“Honestly, it’s been a huge help for my mental health to feel like I am part of something,” she says. “And the Food Bank’s support has made it all possible. I’m running this site, but I couldn’t do it without them. They’re the ones making sure the food is here every week.”