MISSION TO CREATE BETTER LIVES
The Fort Bragg Food Bank has been in its current location, a 4,800 square foot warehouse, since 1993. It’s quite an operation with walk-in refrigeration, pallet shelving, a kitchen, forklifts, delivery trucks and even a generator to power the food distribution facility (including refrigeration) through any power outages.
Do we pay the rent or do we eat?
Who are the Food Bank clients? Young and old, men and women, children — what do they have in common? They are hungry and need nutritious food.
According to a report by the nonprofit organization Feeding America, in California, 6.4 million people are food insecure, lacking reliable access to enough healthy food. The number rose by 2.1 million in 2020, as millions of Californians lost their jobs. The report also states that there are 852,000 children living in food-insecure households in California.
The need may keep growing as the pandemic continues to rage. For those individuals and families, living paycheck to paycheck before the pandemic, all it takes is one or two missing paychecks, and — all of a sudden — they’re facing food insecurity; many of them for the very first time in their lives.
The Food Bank’s mission is to support these people in creating a healthy and better life by providing them with nutritious food.
Volunteer Spotlight: Mark Veregge
Volunteer Mark Veregge arrived in Fort Bragg a year ago from San Jose. “I am volunteering because