A hearty hello to you, readers! Thanks for stopping by The Village Visionary once again to read about another great organization doing great work to better our community! Today’s blog comes from a conversation I had with Alicia Saake, the COO of Feeding San Diego. Read below to learn about food waste and food insecurity in our neighborhoods, and how YOU can help alleviate these problems in your community!

Fresh fruit from local farms is distributed to families in need.

Alicia, what do you do for Feeding San Diego?

I am the COO, so I oversee our programs, operations, and human resources.

Can you tell me how Feeding San Diego began?

Yes, so back in 2007 we actually were born out of the wildfires. At the time, there wasn’t a Feeding America member food bank here in San Diego, and one of the many things Feeding America does in our effort to relieve hunger is respond in times of disaster. So, we started out of a parking lot with a handful of partners, and started distributing food as part of the national network in response to the fires.

So, how does Feeding America work, exactly?

Feeding America is a national network of over 200 member food banks across the entire United States, and we each serve a specific geographic area. Feeding San Diego is responsible for serving San Diego and Imperial Counties. We serve Imperial Counties through a partnership with the Imperial County Food Bank. Feeding America really leverages the power of all the 200 food banks to set up national partnerships. Partnerships with companies like Target, Albertsons, [and] Kroger, for example, as well as other corporate groups for fundraising, help us to do more together as a network than we could do on our own.

Is it like being a franchise, where you are each in charge of your own operation but you fall under this bigger umbrella?

We’re a membership-based organization, so we are all unique and operate in our own ways, but we do subscribe to a membership contract that lays out best practices for nonprofits. Every two years, someone from Feeding America comes out and does a compliance visit to make sure that we’re following the agreed upon rules of the organization around food safety, safety, and again, nonprofit best practices.

Do you know how Feeding America was started?

Volunteers sort and prepare food for distribution at a local elementary school.

Yes, so back in the ‘70’s, there was a guy named John van Hengel in Phoenix, Arizona. He was actually moved by this woman and her kids looking for food outside of a grocery store and actually looking through the trash, and realized that there was a lot of food going to waste and there were people who needed it. And so, he was the one who really started modern day food banking…collecting food from, originally, grocery stores, and bringing it back to a central location, (at the time, it was St. Mary’s Church), and then distributing it out to people who need it. He really started food banking - that way of doing things - and it grew so big [that] it eventually led to Feeding America. For awhile, it was called Second Harvest; the food bank serving Phoenix is actually still called St. Mary’s Food Bank. It moved from Phoenix and the Arizona area eventually to Chicago, so that’s where the headquarters of Feeding America are now.

This was the first food bank in America?

People line up outside Dewey Elementary School during one of Feeding San Diego’s distributions.

St. Mary’s was, yes. But we are all our own, unique…just like all the communities throughout the U.S.. We all serve our community in the best way we know how to. We all look quite different from one another. Feeding San Diego, we’re really proud of our specific model, where half of our food doesn’t even come through our distribution center. Last year, we helped to provide 26 million meals to families facing hunger, and 97% of that was rescued product…so it was food that would otherwise go to waste if we hadn’t been able to rescue it. So, half of that food is going through our distribution center, and we’re collecting it in large quantities. Most of it is actually coming from farms from up and down the coast, and it’s product that was either at the end of its sellable life in packing sheds, or it’s on the farm. And we pay a small handling fee to help the farmers actually pay to get the crop off the field, and then they donate the product to us. So, half of our food is that product, coming through our distribution center. The other half is not coming through our distribution center, and it’s staying decentralized. We already have this great food system in place that is bringing food to grocery stores and neighborhoods throughout our county, and so, rather than bringing that all the way back to our facility and then taking it all the way back to partners in the community, we connect those partners directly to the retailers. Say there’s a Ralph’s in Oceanside…instead of having that food come all the way back to us, passing many, many people who need help and many partners who are able to provide the food to them, only to travel maybe back there after we sort it, we set those organizations up directly. We partner with faith-based organizations, schools, community groups, so they would actually pick up the food and keep it there in Oceanside, versus it coming all the way back here. And that’s one thing that’s really unique about us as a food bank across the Feeding America network.

Do the other food banks rescue as much food?

Other food banks are rescuing food, too, but not quite as much as we are. It’s interesting, because I told you the story of how Feeding America got started, and it really did start with rescuing food. But, over the years, as the TEFAP program has grown and other government food commodity programs have grown, that’s taken up more and more of what food banks do. So, food banks will do both, but it’s not as big of a percentage of what they’re doing because the government commodity food has taken up larger and larger percentages for most food banks in the network.

What program did you reference?

It’s TEFAP: The Emergency Food Assistance Program. That’s the main one. There’s also one called CSFP, which is a program for seniors.

Well, I think it’s amazing that you all are rescuing food. Because, why not?

A young girl and her mom leave a food distribution with bags full of fresh produce from local farms.

Yes. Forty percent of the food in this country is going to waste, and instead of it going to waste, we’re getting it to people who need it. Part of what inspires me at work every day is that, 40% of food is going to waste, and then here in San Diego, one in eight people, and one in six kids are food insecure. These two things should not be happening at the same time, and so we’re all about connecting this additional resource that we have with people who need it, in their communities. We try to make it as easy as possible for people to access this food in their communities and at places where they’re comfortable. So, I mentioned schools earlier. We have over 40 school pantries on school campuses throughout San Diego County, and those are providing families with about 22lbs of food, (half of that is fresh produce), every other week that they’re able to access on campus when they’re picking up or dropping off their kids for school. So, it makes it convenient. It’s at a place that they’re already at, it’s a place that they’re comfortable, and that’s an example of what our goal is in continuing to build those comfortable places for people to access food. And I think that that helps them be able to spend more time doing other things to be successful in their life. So, the easier we can make food access, the more people can spend their time doing other things than trying to find food. I think that’s a really important part of that longer-term vision of a hunger-free and healthy San Diego. To some extent it just has to do with making access to our food as easy as possible.

So, what then is your overall mission statement?

Feeding San Diego is working to ensure that every San Diego mother can feel the joy of being able to feed her family well.

Our vision is a hunger-free and healthy San Diego. Effectively, our mission is to end hunger here in San Diego. We are a hunger relief and food rescue organization and we focus on serving the one in eight people here in San Diego who are food insecure. Now, food insecure means that people don’t have enough regular access to enough food for a healthy and active lifestyle. Most of the people that we’re serving are families that are trying really hard to make ends meet in our very expensive town. Less than 10% of the people we serve are actually facing homelessness, which is a common misconception that people have when they learn about us.

What insights about serving others, or humanity in general, have you gained from doing this work?

I think one of the many powerful lessons I’ve learned comes out of a story of a volunteer experience I had. I brought a group of volunteers from Bank of America with me to San Diego Rescue Mission, which is one of our partners. We were serving meals to the folks who were living at San Diego Rescue Mission at the time. We were all lined up behind the food, getting ready to serve the meal, and the person standing next to me on my right side wasn’t one of the Bank of America volunteers but one of San Diego Rescue Mission’s regular volunteers. So, I got to talking to him and eventually asked him, “What brought you here today?” And he told me that he had actually lived at the rescue mission before and now he’s got a home and he’s working in food service at the convention center, and that it’s important for him to give back and to spend time with his friends and people he knew when he was there. And that’s the kind of story that reminds me that people ask for help when they need it, and they give back when they can. And that inspires me every day to do this work.

Do you ever get to see the longer-term impact of your work?

Not as much as I’d like to. I grew up here in San Diego, in east county. I first learned about Feeding San Diego while I was looking for a place to volunteer, and I learned about our BackPack Program, which we still do but it’s smaller now because we found better ways to serve kids through that school pantry that I mentioned. But there [are] still kids [for whom] it’s really important to distribute [through] our BackPack program. Especially kids facing homelessness, or pregnant and parenting teens. The BackPack program is an 8lb bag of food that is designed to discreetly slide into a kid’s backpack and provide a meal for over the weekend, when we know that kids don’t have access to school meals. And so, this program was going on when I first engaged with Feeding San Diego as a volunteer, over nine years ago. After I started volunteering here, I quickly learned that we actually were serving the school district that I grew up in. Hunger is really invisible to a lot of people. It was shocking that I didn’t know, even when it was happening right down the street from me. So, it is sometimes hard to see, and it’s sometimes disappointing that not as many people understand what a problem it is. Especially that dichotomy I brought up earlier, that 40% of food is going to waste, and one in six kids, one in eight people, are food insecure. It’s unacceptable. So, it is hard that it’s invisible. Sometimes it’s harder for us to see.

So, a hunger-free San Diego is a very tall order. A lot of nonprofits are going after these seemingly unsolvable problems. Do you think that this is a solvable problem? How do you face the overwhelmingness of it all?

Feeding San Diego distributes fresh food from local farms at schools and many other places in San Diego County.

It is a big problem. Feeding America puts out a study called Map the Meal Gap, and it says that there’s over 64 million missing meals here in San Diego County. And we’re at 26 million meals, and we know that [with] other hunger relief organizations along with us, we’re probably meeting about 50 million meals worth of need as a community here in San Diego.

I’m really glad I started my work here within our volunteer department and managing large groups of volunteers, large groups of strangers, working together toward the same thing. Six or seven years ago when I started here, we would have 200 volunteers on a Saturday, and they’d pack produce for one of our programs. As strangers, it’s a little quiet at the beginning, but as they begin working together, they build momentum and they get so much done, and by the end they’re moving super-duper fast. I think I’m inspired by all the good work happening in the county toward hunger relief, and we work through a network. And through community, we’re able to do so much more than we ever would be able to do by ourselves. And it’s inspiring how much we’ve grown. In 12 years, we’re distributing at a rate of 26 million meals a year. That’s good progress. And we know that there’s still more food to rescue.

So, you focus on the progress you’ve made, and you do it as a team.

Yes.

This mother and child smile at each other over a bag of healthy food distributed to them at an FSD distribution.

One of the exciting new things that we’re doing is our MealConnect platform. It’s an app where donors can post food that they’d like to donate, and then, kind of like Uber Eats or Grubhub, the app will then ping volunteers who we’ve trained in food safety to go pick up the food and then deliver it to a partner. And that’s really exciting because we know, again, that there’s a lot of food still going to waste and still a lot of people who need it. It also provides a cool way for people to volunteer on their own time and in their own community. Sometimes it’s hard for people to get to our distribution center here in Sorrento Valley.

Yes, and it’s probably helpful for getting new food suppliers involved.

Yes. It’s a great way to engage the smaller-scale donors. If you think about the whole food system, a lot of food that’s coming to our warehouse is coming in full truckloads; the 53-foot tractor trailers that you see on the highway, that’s the volume that is coming through the warehouse, and then we break it down into manageable sizes for our partners. I mentioned earlier that our partners are going to the grocery stores. So, they’re going in smaller trucks, and sometimes personal vehicles with freezer blankets and thermometers, but this is really opening up to smaller [partners]…caterers, restaurants… to be able to donate as well, and is taking away that constraint on our partners in being able to actually go pick it up because we’re building this volunteer base. It’s still new, but we’re really excited about it and the potential.

That sounds awesome! And speaking of volunteers, how can people get involved?

The best thing to do is to visit our website at feedingsandiego.org, and sign up to volunteer, or to donate, or advocate. People’s voices are really important in helping us to create change. We have over 14,000 volunteers each year who support our work here at Feeding San Diego, and thousands of donors who are helping us do this work every day as well.

And as far as people in their everyday lives…do you have any advice as to how we can help combat this problem, aside from volunteering?

So, I think there’s two sides. One is just understanding it is a problem, and helping to build awareness is huge. Again, one in eight people…people might know somebody. There’s a good chance that people know somebody who is facing hunger, or has, and so building awareness and learning about it, I think, is a great place to start. Because, how can we ignore something once we’ve learned about it? The other thing [is that] there’s also great resources about just not wasting food…which is a little different than our mission, but in people’s personal lives if they’re inspired by not wasting food, there’s some great resources to help learn how to manage food waste at home. Savethefood.org is a great resource just to learn about food waste and how you can make a change in your own life.

Everyone should have the opportunity to eat healthy, nutritious food. Feeding San Diego is working hard to make that a reality in San Diego and Imperial Counties.

You were talking about how at school, when you were growing up in East County, you didn’t even know it was a problem. And then you just mentioned how a lot of people have someone in their lives who is suffering from this. What are the signs?

There’s a lot of stigma around hunger, so a lot of people hide it very well. I think helping to break down the stigma and be a safe space for people to express if it’s something that they face is a huge part of helping to connect people to resources. If people are looking for food resources, they can give us a call, they can go to our website, or they can call 211. [It] is a great resource and all of our partners are listed there as well to help connect people to food and other resources if they’re struggling to balance this expensive place to live.

In your opinion, what does it mean to be a visionary?

I think being a visionary is not being afraid of these big, scary goals like ending hunger. Our vision of a hunger-free and healthy San Diego is big and scary, and how to get there is not clearly defined. I think that being a visionary is seeing that and having a picture of how that can be true, and holding oneself to that vision, that picture in your mind, that it’s possible…even when other people might think it’s not.

Thank you, Alicia, and thank you, Feeding San Diego, for the great work you’re doing in our community! Readers, I encourage you to think about what specific things you can do to help alleviate hunger for others, and to prevent unnecessary food waste in your own life! Please comment with any ideas you’d like to share with us, and if you’d like to receive regular content regarding visual storytelling and inspiring ways to make a difference in this world, subscribe to my newsletter below!

If you like the images accompanying this story and would like to explore how visual storytelling could help your organization share the heart of its mission, please visit my website, www.soulvoyagerstudios.com, or send me an email at soulvoyagerstudios@gmail.com.

Working Toward a Hunger-Free and Healthy San Diego - with Feeding San Diego