Santa Barbara County Food Bank Fundraiser

The Foodbank of Santa Barbara County continues its work to provide enough healthy food to everyone who needs it in Santa Barbara County as the Covid-19 crisis unfolds. The Foodbank’s initiative is called Safe Access to Food for Everyone (SAFE) Food Net.

SAFETY: We established the SAFE Food Net to emphasize to the community that all Foodbank operations are conducted under impeccable safety protocols, with strict adherence to CDC and County Public Health recommendations.

The health, and most immediately the safety, of community members receiving food, our volunteers and partners, our drivers and our staff, is our utmost priority.

Of the 50 SAFE Food Net distributions the Foodbank is operating, nearly 20 brand new emergency drive-thru food distributions make receiving healthy food fast, easy and extremely safe. Visiting community members answer three brief questions, then volunteers load food bags into the back of the vehicle, and recipients drive away with healthy groceries and fresh produce.

 

 

 

SENIORS: All of the Foodbank’s Brown Bag programs for low-income seniors have switched exclusively to home-deliveries. Seniors and members of the community with disabilities that prevent them from visiting a food distribution may call the Foodbank’s new SAFE Food Net call line to register for home delivery.

Individual volunteer drivers may sign up to for home delivery routes; bags are left on doorsteps. In addition to its corps of individual volunteer drivers, the Foodbank is partnering with the following local organizations for home deliveries: Community Partners in Caring in Santa Maria, Family Services Agency in Lompoc, and Easy Lift in Santa Barbara and other areas.

INCREASED NEED FOR FOOD: A visible, and staggering, increase in need for food is evolving throughout the county. Foodbank partner services staff report that a monthly food distribution that serves 100 families at the Lompoc Boys & Girls Club had 200 families lined up to wait for food three hours before the distribution began. At a site in Santa Maria where we normally serve 75 families, food was gone in 15 minutes, so the distribution is moving to serving 200 families three times a week there, reaching 600 families in one week.

ADDITIONAL WAREHOUSES: The Foodbank has signed lease agreements for additional warehouse space in both Santa Barbara and Santa Maria, doubling storage space and expanding volunteer service space to ensure greater numbers of volunteers can maintain social distancing at their shifts to enable the Foodbank to keep up with demand for pre-packed bags of food. Now we need help to fill those warehouses with food. To meet this sudden spike in demand, we are asking our community to help us raise the funds we will need to keep Santa Barbara County’s jobless and sick people fed and healthy. We are grateful for whatever support you can provide to help us nourish our community.