Special Initiatives

We help our members become more effective and stay up-to-date by facilitating the sharing of promising practices among food banks through regional meetings, webinars, peer-to-peer discussion groups, newsletters, templates, toolkits, and conferences. Topics include food public policy, community outreach, communication, and fundraising.

California’s farm workers feed the world yet the ironic truth is, the rates of hunger among our farm worker community are staggering. We have undertaken a special initiative, working in partnership with food banks based in agricultural regions to create better access to food resources for our farm workers. As we work to better understand the needs of this community we are also working closely with other organizations who advocate on behalf of farmworkers and immigrant communities. Learn more about our Food Access for Farmworkers Initiative here. (Spanish version here).

California’s rural and remote food banks face barriers resulting from low population density coupled with larger geographic service areas. This dynamic increases the cost of food, staffing, and transportation for food banks located in these regions. At the same time, hunger in rural communities continues to rise.

We work with rural and remote food banks to:

When disaster strikes, food banks maintain the vital flow of food into California’s communities to nourish them through the initial crisis and during the long rebuilding process. We work to help coordinate support to the impacted food banks, provide food resources as necessary, and create awareness of information and available resources such as Disaster-CalFresh.

We are helping members to evaluate their disaster resiliency plans and engage with their local officials and other nonprofits to create county-based disaster food distribution plans.