FEEDING THE HUNGRY WITH THE FOOD BANK
Sparrow, Faith Food Fridays count on deliveries
Helping those in need wasn’t much at the beginning for Benjamin Buggs. Toss some fresh produce into the back of a Nissan Pathfinder. Wait for the families to arrive and be done with it.
“We really thought that was awesome,” Buggs remembers. “I look back and think, ‘Man, if we’d only known was coming.’”
Buggs laughed. What was coming was an avalanche of need. Those roughly 75 families a week turned into 300 — sometimes 500 — as Faith Food Fridays evolved into one of Vallejo’s
key sites to help feed the local hungry.
It would be a lot tougher — perhaps impossible — to keep up with the demand if not for the Food Bank of Contra Costa
& Solano, agreed Buggs and First Baptist Church’s Mike Brown, coordinator of the Sparrow Project as two of the Times-Herald’s Community Christmas Card recipients leap into the holiday demand.
The Food Bank celebrates its 40th season this year, with charter executive producer Larry Sly eyeing retirement. Without the twice-weekly delivery in the First Baptist lot serving 15 area agencies, “We’d be back to what we did our first few weeks (in 2011) — handing each family, no matter what their size, one plastic bag of canned food,” Buggs said. “I’m amazed at what our one Food Bank does.”
“It would be a lot more expensive and a lot more intensive” to meet the needs without the Food Bank, Brown said.
Before linking the Sparrow Project with the Food Bank, Brown depended on individuals and various churches to contribute.
“That would help us out, but it was kind of scarce,” Brown said. “It was really meager.”
When the Food Bank connection started in 2003, “they did a wonderful job of growing and making it easier on all agencies,” Brown said. “It made it so much easier to us.”
Every Monday and Thursday, one of the Food Bank semi-trucks brings 20,000 pounds of food to First Baptist as nonprofits arrive for pick-up.
“Whatever we get that day, we try hard to use that day. We don’t want anything to go bad,” said Brown, who places an order in every week and is considerate of those with dietary restrictions such as
diabetics.
Brown said the food is purchased, but at considerably less than if storebought. Sometimes there’s leftover food that the Food Bank offers, depending on the season.
“If we get some fruit, apples, pears, kiwi, we’ll make a salad, especially if we get some good lettuce,” Brown said.
Faith Food Fridays — which added Tuesdays — takes two box vans and a truck to the distribution point every Thursday at First Baptist. What once filled Buggs’ Pathfinder now is loaded onto pallets.
“Once or twice we’ve had to go back to Faith Food Fridays and unload, then come back for a second time,” Buggs said
Beyond the paid pre-orders, “we know the general categories of what we’ll be getting for free at the distributions, but not specially and not in what quantities,” Buggs said. “We try to order enough foods that can cover us.”
Buggs said there’s a “definite camaraderie” of the nonprofits who feed the city’s hungry.
“We are like different branches of the armed forces. We all know what each other goes through in this work and we try and support each other as much as possible,” Buggs said. “Every agency covers a different part of the city or a different population; there’s mental health and other organizations that do specific work that we don’t. It’s a well-oiled machine but we’re barely covering people’s needs. We just don’t want any hungry people in Vallejo.”
Buggs’ wife and co-creator of First Food Fridays, Mary Ann Buggs, has a unique perspective. She’s worked for the Food Bank for 18 months as Advocacy & Community Engagement
Coordinator, crusading for anti-hunger and anti-poverty bills at the state and federal level.
“I’d never even thought of working for the Food Bank,” said Buggs, a former Wells Fargo employee. “It’s been a dream come true to actually get paid for doing what I feel so deeply about.”
The Food Bank, she continued, “is full of very smart, very compassionate people all working together to end hunger.”
The public can get involved by contacting local elected officials regarding any anti-hunger, anti-poverty legislation, Mary Ann Buggs said, and can participate by volunteering or donating money.
She knows what it’s like to go hungry.
“I’ve had to go to food pantries when I was raising my kids before I met Benjamin. It’s never an enjoyable time,” she said. “Nobody likes to be hungry and the sad fact is, hunger isn’t going away any time soon.”
To donate
To donate online to the Times-Herald’s Community Christmas Card: Visit the Solano Community Foundation at solanocf.org. To donate by check via mail, send (or drop off) to Doreen Boggs c/o The Times-Herald, 420 Virginia St., Suite 2A, Vallejo, 94590. All donors will be listed in the Times-Herald.