Innovative partnership transforms food assistance in Berkeley and beyondAt the start of 2020, a busy day for the Alameda County Community Food Bank’s emergency food helpline meant fielding 40 to 60 calls. In mid-March, call volume spiked to 400 a day. It stayed there for months as members of the community grappled with the loss of income that came with pandemic-related business closures.
“Only a quarter of the people who were experiencing food insecurity in Berkeley and Albany were able to access existing pantry and prepared meal assistance programs,” said BFN Executive Director and Co-founder Sara Webber.Backed by a grant from Bayer Fund, the philanthropic arm of Bayer in the U.S., the two agencies committed to addressing food insecurity in the East Bay dove into action.
“The opportunity to foster innovation in serving those in need made incredible sense for us philanthropically,” said Jens Vogel, SVP and global head of biotech for Bayer Pharmaceuticals and member of the Bayer Fund board of directors.
Through the RDO partnership, every month ACCFB’s trucks deliver 80,000 pounds of food, more than 66,000 meals, to Berkeley Food Network’s facility. Berkeley Food Network then redistributes that food to its own network of partners. The added efficiency of this model means the two organizations can reach deeper into the Berkeley community and scale to provide better services to anyone who needs them.
Then, the network distributes it to people as close to where they live as possible. It operates an on-site pantry, but the bulk of its food goes to mobile and fixed pantries across the community, the Berkeley Public School Bag Program and various hot meal programs. BFN’s hub kitchen program also creates and distributes about 800 meals a week.
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