Tag: Volunteer

Hunger Doesn’t Take a Break – Please Volunteer

March 13, 2020

Here at the San Francisco-Marin Food Bank, we serve some of the most vulnerable people in our community; children, seniors, homebound adults with disabilities, and families struggling to make ends meet. Now, more than ever, it’s critical to get food out to the community. Schools are closing, people are homebound, and many have their work hours cut in the wake of COVID–19.  

At this time, the Food Bank is still fully operational. As indicated in the new public health order that requires residents to stay home except for essential needs, food banks are an essential service similar to a grocery store, and we must continue to work to distribute food out in the community.

The backbone of our operation

We can’t provide food without you. Our volunteers help us pack and distribute over 1 million pounds of food per month! It’s understandable that there are concerns about volunteering at this point. And individuals should consider their own health and well-being before deciding whether or not to volunteer. We are closely monitoring the situation and we are in close contact with the SF Department of Public Health and are following their recommendations. We are reevaluating our operations daily. 

To protect the health of our volunteers, and staff, we have made changes to our warehouse volunteer program, for example, reducing the number of volunteers at each shift and cutting non-essential projects. Right now, we are only packing senior boxes and grocery bags for delivery to homebound neighbors. We have also stepped up our cleaning and are wiping down all equipment after every shift, and asking all volunteers to keep a reasonable distance from one another while at the warehouse and when possible moving the projects outside. We also have plenty of hand sanitizer and gloves are mandatory for volunteers.

And of course, if any volunteer is feeling unwell, we ask them to stay home.

More need out in the community

Our volunteer needs are ever-changing as we adapt and respond to the challenges COVID-19 presents and determine how to best serve our community. If you are interested in learning about future opportunities in the warehouse and in the community as they arise in response to COVID-19, please, go to our volunteer page to sign up.

Questions? Read our FAQ

Thank you for your support!

PS. If you want to see what it is like to volunteer at our warehouse, press play.

Lily’s Determination to End Bay Area Hunger

February 21, 2020

Twenty-three tons is no match for Lily, one of our super-sheroes! That’s the amount of rice that was collected with her determination and dedication to ending Bay Area hunger.

Like most other teenagers, Lily’s very busy with her schoolwork, her favorite class being band, where she plays the French horn. And she loves to play classical guitar, hang out with her friends and listen to Billy Eilish and the AJR Band. What’s different is that Lily is a major fundraiser for good!

When Lily was just six years old, she began appealing for donations to buy gifts and clothes for foster kids and homeless youth through her own nonprofit, www.givewithlily.com. From there, she expanded to helping feed the hungry. Her desire to help those facing hunger was, in part, spurred one Halloween when she saw other kids collecting cans of food while trick or treating. Lily joined in and got over 90lbs of cans.

Her commitment continued to grow in 6th grade when several classes competed to get the most canned food donations; When her class was coming in dead last, she stepped up to collect money to buy 1,100 cans of food! There wasn’t any rule against doing that, and she wanted to win–and that’s just what they did due to Lily’s ingenuity and determination.

Supersizing her donations

Lily realized that she could get more bang for her buck if she bought food in bulk for donations to the local food banks. She researched and cold-called rice distributors while collecting money to purchase and deliver the rice. The bulk rice provider informed her that $1000 would get her one ton of rice.

A week later, she called the rice supplier back, and they generously told her that now she could get two tons. While working out the delivery details, she called them again and was pleasantly surprised to find out that she would get three tons for $1,000! She quickly mailed the check and arranged the delivery while raising more money. After a couple of weeks, she noticed that her check had not been cashed and started to worry that something was wrong. When she talked with them, they said, “The rice is on us, and we’re going to tear up the check!” Lily was pleasantly surprised by their continued generosity, and now she had $1,000 to get more rice.

Once again, Lily was determined to maximize the amount of rice she could get for her money. This time, she went directly to a larger California rice distributor and bought three additional rice tons. Now she had six tons and arranged its delivery to us in December 2018.

As you can tell by now, once Lily figures out how to beat her record, she keeps going. Between July 2019 and January 31, 2020, she bought and arranged delivery for another seventeen tons of rice, making her total twenty-three tons! The rice was not just for our foodbank, but also for the Alameda County Community Food Bank, the Food Bank of Contra Costa and Solano, and Second Harvest. We were thrilled to bag it for the other food banks. Lily was thrilled and grateful that her donors trusted her with their money and helped her with logistics.

When asked what message she has for others, Lily said, “Hunger is everywhere, and if we don’t help, who will?” We are so grateful for Lily’s compassion and dedication to helping provide #FoodforAll. Thank you, Lily, with all our hearts.

 

 

 

Nourishing the Community through Namaste

October 17, 2018

It’s a cool evening in San Francisco’s Crocker-Amazon neighborhood, with a healthy layer of the city’s ubiquitous fog blanketing the sky above – but it’s a much different story down below, where a certain warmth glows from Tony Garcia’s home yoga studio.  It’s here where the muscular. mustachioed man in his 50s says he does his best work.

“I got into yoga several years ago as a way to center myself.  I enjoyed it so much that I decided to become a certified instructor so I could spread the goodness to friends and family,” he says.

Tony and his wife Rachel went so far as to convert the downstairs section of their home into a full-blown yoga studio – complete with bamboo flooring, rubber mats, and special mood lighting.  Soon after, they started hosting bi-monthly sessions.

“We invited family members and neighbors to give it a try.  It was slow going at first, but the idea eventually caught on,” says Tony.  “Now we see 5 to 10 people every other week.”

What also caught on was how the Garcias would use their newfound love of yoga to give back.  “I knew I wasn’t in it to make money … instead, I wanted this all to mean something more.”

That’s when Tony hearkened back to a volunteer shift he attended at the Food Bank as part of his employment with the City and County of San Francisco. “It was a while ago, but I remember being so impressed with the operation…about how much work goes into feeding people in this city who don’t have enough food to be healthy,” he recalls.  “And I thought that THIS was the time that I could do more to help.”

The Garcias decided to ask their “students” to give whatever they felt the lesson was worth, with all of the proceeds making their way into a special teapot that sits in the yoga studio.  Then, every few weeks when the teapot gets full, Tony or Rachel donate it to the Food Bank.

“That was about 7 years ago…and I’m happy to say that we have never wavered,” Tony says. “100-percent of all the money that’s been raised through my yoga classes has been used to help feed the less fortunate.”

Food Bank spokesperson Mark Seelig applauds the Garcias’ extraordinary efforts. “It goes to show you that there are more ways to be philanthropic than by just pulling out your checkbook or swiping your credit card.  The best part is that these funds all add up, and help us make a real difference in our mission to end hunger in San Francisco and Marin.”

Over the years, the Garcias have become way more savvy in their gift-giving.  “We now wait until the Food Bank offers some sort of corporate match to donate – so we can double the impact!”  They’re not finished just yet either.  Tony says he plans to keep doing this … “as long as my body holds out, and as long as we have friends and family who want to support the Food Bank in the most calming way possible!”

If you are giving to the Food Bank in a creative or unusual way, please leave us a comment.  And click here if you would like to make a generous donation to the Food Bank.

Our Volunteers Make A Difference

May 31, 2018

Forty thousand!  That’s the number of volunteers who have walked through our doors and helped sort produce, pack one-pound bags of rice, or staff one of our Produce Pop-Ups.  Volunteers are not just a way for us to involve the community in our mission to end hunger in San Francisco and Marin – they are intrinsic to our entire operation.

We’ve done the math, and 40,000 volunteer working shifts in our warehouses and out in the community put in as many hours as 62 full-time employees. To put it simply, we couldn’t accomplish all that we do without the support of our amazing volunteers.

Carly Levin is a Food Bank board member and the executive director of JP Morgan Chase & Co.  She and other employees have been among our biggest supporters, volunteering dozens of hours in our warehouse, and making generous donations – including a $25,000 match for our first-ever volunteer-only matching gift challenge in April.  Their support is essential for keeping many of our vital programs up and running.

“There is no better way to spend the day,”says Levin, who recently volunteered at a food pantry. “Participants are filled with gratitude for the abundance of fresh fruits and vegetables they receive to feed their families. And our job as volunteers is to make them feel welcome.”

In April, we hosted a special celebration in our San Francisco warehouse to mark Volunteer Appreciation Week.  We invited some of our most ardent supporters for a day of fun, food and carnival games as a way to show our gratitude. Click here to view our photo album from Volunteer Fest 2018.

We distribute 48 million pounds of food to nearly a quarter of a million people every year and volunteers are essential to this work.  Thank you, volunteers – for your dedication and enthusiasm for  helping our community.

 

 

April 12, 2018

Full Circle | A Volunteer’s Perspective

November 16, 2017

Barbara Elliott caught herself chuckling the other day as she was breaking down food boxes inside St. Dominic’s Catholic Church in San Francisco’s Lower Pac Heights. It was Monday morning and the longtime parishioner was volunteering her time at the food pantry in the downstairs community room.

“I’m laughing because I recently volunteered at the Food Bank’s warehouse, and my job there was to build the food boxes… here I am now, tearing them down!”

Indeed, the 74-year-old Elliott has come full circle. She has seen how the food comes into our warehouse and how it’s packed for distribution and is also intimately aware of where it goes — into the hands of our neighbors in need.

VOLUNTEERS MAKE THE DIFFERENCE

Elliott is one of 40,000 volunteers who gave their time this year to help the Food Bank in its mission to end hunger in San Francisco and Marin. That’s the equivalent of 70 full-time employees, and every last person is needed to distribute just over 48 million pounds this year. “There is absolutely no way we could move that much food and feed that many people if we didn’t have volunteers like Barbara, willing to give up a few hours of their time each week, to pack food, hand out food, and do it with a smile,” says Food Bank Community Engagement Manager, Cody Jang.

A volunteer shift is fast-paced and exciting. Many of our warehouse shifts involve boxing up thousands of pounds of fruits or vegetables. Sometimes our volunteers are tasked with repacking rice into family-friendly one-pound bags. Every volunteer leaves knowing just how much they packed or sorted, and how much of an impact it will make on the community later that week.

You can count Elliott as a believer.  “I really enjoyed my volunteer shift in the warehouse, but find it much more rewarding to see the smile on people’s faces when they receive these fresh groceries every week at my pantry.”

If you’d like to donate your time at one of the two Food Bank warehouses, please sign up here.

Meet Jayden, a Hunger Hero

May 26, 2017

Fifth grader Jayden and his family rely on weekly food assistance from the Food Bank, but his superpower is giving back. This little hero wakes up every Monday morning, two hours before school starts, to volunteer with his grandmother at their neighborhood food pantry.

When we asked him whether it’s hard to get up early, he says, “I do it to make sure that everyone who comes to school won’t be hungry.”

All year, kids like Jayden step up to help their families and community face hunger. But when schools close for the summer and families lose access to school meal programs, childhood hunger reaches its peak. Right now, proposed cuts to food assistance programs threaten to make childhood summer hunger even worse.

Luckily, today you have twice the power to fight childhood hunger. Through June 15th, PG&E is matching all gifts to the Food Bank. Please make a gift today and be a Summer Hunger Hero for kids like Jayden. Please donate here.

Everyday Heroes at the Food Bank

January 13, 2017

Story and photographs by Marilyn Englander, Food Bank volunteer and founding head of REAL School Marin

Joe, the San Francisco-Marin Food Bank Community Engagement Coordinator, fondly calls them “The Sustainers.” He explained to me how a loyal group of volunteers faithfully shows up every week to help in the warehouse.

There is the Monday gang, and the Tuesday gang, Wednesday and Thursday groups. But many Mondays are also Tuesdays, and some come all four days. Their volunteer efforts equal the work of more than two full-time paid employees. Without them, the Food Bank could never get so much food out to the neighborhood pantries for neighbors in need.

Andy drives all the way from Vallejo, and Kevin takes a 30-minute bus ride from Mill Valley, then walks two miles on foot. Sandy always brings mouth-watering cookies to share during the morning break. They secretly plot birthday celebrations for fellow volunteers, everyone joining in to serenade as the honoree blushes. Starting out strangers, slowly they have become the backbone of the Novato operation, and also a community to each other.

I had decided to volunteer on a whim, choosing a slot open on the Food Bank website calendar. I assumed everyone did the same: once in a blue moon, we’d consider giving our time. The first day I turned up, I had no idea I was sorting, packing and stacking food alongside real experts. But I certainly admired Bryan’s skill as he rapidly assembled and taped boxes. Betty had mastered sorting slippery packages of frozen meat, and Peggy tirelessly leaned over and over again into a deep bin to retrieve heavy cans of beans. Mary had the wash-and-sanitize station under strict control. Jacky was there five days a week running the “shopping” area where small nonprofits come to choose supplies for their pantries.

The Sustainers exude enthusiasm and drive as they tackle each three-hour shift. You would imagine they were competing in an Olympic challenge, they show such focus and efficiency. They chat a little, but mostly it is a joyful frenzy: bag 300 pounds of pasta before noon, label 1200 jars of instant coffee — and get those labels on straight! One time we dug through 20 bushels of green peppers in 30 minutes, checking for blemishes before boxing them up for the pantries. It’s grunt work, but with the Sustainers in the lead, it’s as if we’re kids playing in a sandbox. And they do it day after day, week after week — heroes guaranteeing everyone gets to eat.

Feeling inspired?  Learn more about volunteering and sign up > sfmfoodbank.org/volunteer.