Food bank distributions remain high
The North Valley Food Bank has been growing since Executive Director Jessy Lee took over in 2019, adding more hours and serving more families.
It’s a good thing, she says, as without that growth, the food bank might not have been ready to handle a pandemic.
“A lot of people who are newly unemployed during COVID have needed us for the first time. Along with that, 30% of the people only come one time. I think for a lot of folks initially, there was a layoff and immediate loss of income, and then they’ve been able to stabilize their households and their income since then, so they only needed our services one time,” she says.
Lee says the food bank has seen a 70% growth in the number of households served since January 2019. Since the pandemic took hold in the U.S. in March, the food bank also saw an immediate 60% spike that’s leveled out to a sustained 30% growth in that period. They’re also distributing 82% more food, and without their normal volunteer force.
“We’re busting at the seams right now,” Lee says.
On the other side of things, Lee says the food bank received a tremendous amount of support in the early days of the pandemic as well, both financially and in food donations.
“Initially it was kind of crazy. A lot of restaurants temporarily closed during the shelter in place order, so while grocery stores were hit tremendously hard by people getting food, restaurants were closing and bringing their entire fresh inventory to us. So we had just mountains of beautiful, fresh produce,” she says. “That has waned, now that folks are open again, but we still have a lot of people that come in and drop off small amounts of food. And we’ve seen an increase in financial contributions certainly.”
North Valley Food Bank has also increased its hours by quite a bit since Lee took over.
In January 2019, the food bank was open two hours a week. By the fall, that number increased to six hours, and now they’re open for 14 hours each week.
The limited availability was a big obstacle for those who might have needed help, Lee said.
“The idea behind that was that these two hours a week were a real barrier. People are at work, it’s in the middle of the day on a Thursday for two short hours. We’re looking at a ways we can remove barriers to services, and we realized that it’s just a barrier when we’re only open a couple hours a week,” she says. “So now we’re far more accessible to folks who need a little help to get through.”
Moving forward, Lee says they’re focused on improving the foundations of the food bank so they can continue to grow and help more and more people.
Part of that is in fundraising, as the Great Fish Challenge started last week. North Valley Food Bank hopes to raise $72,000 during the challenge.
“That will go toward our general operations, so directly to sustaining operations and continuing to help us grow. It’s the largest goal we’ve ever had,” she says. “Meeting our goal is more important than it’s ever been.”
She’s also hoping to get a long-awaited remodel underway this fall, which will help expand current services and plan for future growth.
“It will give us the opportunity to create a choice model pantry, which we’ve been talking about for awhile, putting in a commercial kitchen, and then new consideration is we’re hoping to add an addition onto the building that will free up warehouse space and that will give us ample refrigeration and freezer space to move the quantity of food that we’re moving right now. So we’re creating a foundation that will allow us to scale up,” she says.
For more information, visit northvalleyfoodbank.org.
