As food banks across the Bay Area report rising demand this winter, local organizations are expanding efforts to keep families fed. At Palo Alto High School, students and parent volunteers have stepped in by collecting donations to support community meal programs during the holidays.
The Ecumenical Hunger Program in East Palo Alto received donations before thanksgiving as a result of Paly’s Youth Community Service Interact Club’s food drive.
According to LaKesha Roberts, EHP associate director, the donations from Paly were incredibly helpful this year.
“Right now, with the way things have been and the donations being as low as they have, being able to get to that influx of food donations right before the holidays is a huge help,” Roberts said. “Especially with Thanksgiving, where we serve so many more families than we regularly do. On average, we help anywhere from 700 to 800 households throughout the week. For Thanksgiving, we’re still tallying numbers, but we’ve hit almost 1200 families, and we did that in three days.”
This was also the first time since 2013 EHP had to purchase its own food. Roberts said that over Thanksgiving, the food bank that EHP has relied on made the decision not to purchase meat.
“This year they [EHP’s food bank] decided not to purchase any meat for the holidays because they found that a lot of their agencies preferred to provide more of the essential food items,” Roberts said. “This is the first year we actually had to go out and source our own turkeys. “
Roberts said she credits this change in funding to rising prices and, as a result, rising demand.
“Things have been harder with the rising costs, and now everything is a lot more expensive,” Roberts said. “Funding isn’t what it used to be.”
According to Tessa Berney, Paly junior and president of YCS-Interact Club, they encouraged student donations by creating a competition with the help of Paly’s Social Justice Program.
“To ensure we had ample student participation, YCS-Interact Club created a competition in SJP where each cohort battled each other to see who could donate the most,” Berney said. “The juniors won and will get a pizza party later in the year.”
Berney said that she is proud of the success the food drive was.
“I was very happy with the outcome of this food drive,” Berney said. “In total we raised $3500 and collected over 500 food donations.”
Roberts said, the donations and contributions made to EHP throughout the community are increasingly helpful.
“Donations aren’t coming in as much as they were, so to be able to have schools with other groups and church groups come together and hold drives and donate food really helps,” Roberts said. “It fills that gap and it really helps to make our distributions possible so that we can continue to serve families.”
In addition to EHP’s holiday funding efforts is the Palo Alto High School Wish List, which, according to Lauren Williams, Palo Alto High School Holiday Wish List organizer, is another program to help provide food for families in December.
“It’s a really simple but impactful program,” Williams said. “Families who need support get it in a way that respects their dignity and privacy. And families who want to help their neighbors have a way to do that.”
According to Williams, she began the program when her kids went to Frank S. Greene Middle School after discovering they didn’t have a holiday gift program.
“With the support of the PTA, the Holiday Wish List was launched at Greene,” Williams said. “This year, my daughter started at Paly, I asked the PTA for their support to bring the program here. I usually say the Wish List is Paly’s version of the Giving Tree.”
Williams said that the program has been successful so far in addressing community wishes.
“This year, the Holiday Wish List community filled about 120 wishes and every family will receive a $70 gift card for their groceries,” Williams said.
