FOOD BANK STEPS IT UP DURING THE PANDEMIC
Joel Sjostrom saw the writing on the wall.
He had just been hired in December 2019 as President and CEO of the Food Bank of Contra Costa and Solano Counties, replacing Larry Sly, who retired after serving as executive director for 43 years.
About three weeks before the pandemic shelter-athome order went into effect in March 2020, Sjostrom was sitting at his desk looking at the number of hours volunteers had put in for the Food Bank in the previous 12 months.
“We had 104,000 volunteer hours prior to the pandemic,” he said. “That’s the equivalent of 54 full-time employees. That’s half of our workforce. The virus was starting to gain momentum and I did some napkin math and said, ‘What would happen if we lost 30 percent of our workforce?’ And it scared me because it was 435 hours a week and a lot of our volunteer workforce are in that vulnerable older age group. And guess what happened with shelter in place?”
What happened was that the Food Bank immediately lost 30-35 percent of its workforce. But Sjostrom wasted no time in addressing the crisis. One hour after the shelter-in-place order in March took effect, he was on the phone to the National Guard.
“I worked very hard the next couple of weeks to get in the queue and ultimately to get the assistance of the National Guard,” he recalled. “About three or four weeks after shelter in place, we had 20-25 soldiers stationed at our Fairfield location and they would be boxing about 1,000 shelf-stable boxes of food in the morning and then they would be bagging produce for us in the afternoon. Now we are down to 6-8 soldiers a day, but it is still five days a week and they are still boxing and bagging every day. So it has really been a blessing for us.”
About eight weeks after the order went into effect, Food Bank volunteers started to come back
“They were comfortable coming in knowing that we were really strict in our protocols of signing in and temperature checks and hand washing and masks and social distancing,” said Sjostrom. “I looked last month and our volunteer hours were up 22 percent over last year. Our community has really stepped up and that has enabled us to increase dramatically the number of clients we can serve through this pandemic.”
Incredibly, the Food Bank, which was serving 178,000 clients a month in the two counties prior to the pandemic, is now serving about 280,000 per month.
“We’re seeing a lot of new faces, people who never faced food insecurity before,” said Sjostrom. “We have increased our pounds per month distributed between 50 and 70 percent each month over the last nine months. In December we had two straight weeks
in which we distributed over a million pounds of food in a week.”
About half of that food is distributed through a network of over 240 agencies in the two counties. There are about 75 food distribution events each week. The Food Bank puts together a 23-pound box of shelf-stable products designed to provide about 10 meals. The box includes tins of tuna and chicken as well as vegetables, fruit and pasta. The organization distributes about 100,000 of those boxes each week.
“We did a drive-thru distribution last week in Vallejo that had 260 cars in an hour and a half,” said Sjostrom. “It’s literally from truck to trunk. So it’s the safest way for us to distribute larger amounts of food.”
For most of the distributions, especially those that include boxes of proteins and dairy from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, those receiving
the food are asked to verbally self-certify their income level by looking at a laminated card listing income bracket and family size.
The Food Bank also targets specific populations.
“We have a senior food program geared toward folks that are 55 and older that are low income,” said Program Director Nora Nicholson. “We are serving underserved schools in the community. And then many of the people that come to our food distributions are the working poor who are just trying to get by with the cost of living in the Bay Area and the challenges of COVID.”
The Food Bank partners with Meals on Wheels by providing the food that that program distributes to seniors. It also lets the community know about CalFresh, federally known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which issues monthly electronic benefits to qualifying low-income individuals that can be used to buy most foods at many markets and food stores.
Where does all this food come from? In addition to that provided by the USDA, some of it comes from people filling donation barrels, but much of it comes from wholesale purchases by the Food Bank using money it receives from donations and grants.
For distribution, the Food Bank depends in large part on volunteers.
“They are the lifeblood of our organization,” said Nicholson. “Warehouse volunteers are sorting the products that come in. We get a lot of whole produce and bag it. Out in the community, some of our volunteers are running our distributions, monitoring the lines, making sure everyone is moving in an efficient way.”
Sjostrom goes to some of the food distributions and hears the phone calls that come in from people whose livelihood has been impaired by the pandemic.
“One of the sad things for me is hearing people that have to decide between paying rent and buying food, especially if they have families,” he said. “With all the lost jobs, it doesn’t take much… Now all of a sudden that paycheck is gone and they are facing food insecurity. And they never thought they would be there.”
He said it takes some people a while to realize that assistance is available.
“They don’t know the food bank resource a lot of times and when they do hear about us, they are extremely thankful,” he said. “Sometimes they are very surprised at the number of different food distributions we have, the different places they can go.”
Those partner agencies include soup kitchens, churches and food pantries. To find out where food is being distributed in a particular city, go to www.foodbankccs.org and click on the “Get Food” tab and then the “Find Food in My City” tab. Scroll down and you will find listings for Vacaville, Fairfield-Suisun City, Dixon and other Solano County cities.
But even with all the resources that the Food Bank and its partners have made available, there are many people still in need during this recession caused by the pandemic.
“Like the recession of 2008-09, this is not going to go away in two or three months,” said Sjostrom. “In 2008-09, we saw food insecurity run high for the next 4-5 years. We all hope that this recession will have a faster recovery than 200809. … And that is why our Food Bank is here, to be sustainable, to meet the rising need, not just for the next few months but for the next few years.”
How you can help:
• Donate: foodbankccs. org/give-help/donate.html ($1 provides enough food for two meals)
• Host a Virtual Food Drive: foodbankccs.org/virtualfooddrive
• Volunteer: foodbankccs. org/volunteer
• Follow the Food Bank and share on social media: @foodbankccs
• Advocate: foodbankccs. org/advocate