YFPA Volunteer Day with the San Francisco Food Bank August 23, 2008

Did you miss out on YFPA's Volunteer Day last weekend (09AUG2008)?

YFPA volunteers did an amazing job painting the walls of the Pilipino Bayanihan Resource Center (PBRC). The experience was even more amazing with the presence and culinary skills around the grill by California Senator Leland Yee. With grill, burgers, hotdogs and his apron in tow, he fed us while fully engaging with members from our organization. Since this last Volunteer Day was so successful, YFPA decided to kick off another one!

So, c'mon out and join us for the the next YFPA Volunteer Day. We'll be giving back to the community by spending a couple of hours at the San Francisco Food Bank preparing needed food to help the city fight against hunger.

We'll initial meet at Goat Hill Pizza in the Portrero Hill Neighborhood (300 Connecticut at 18th Street, San Francisco, CA) at 11:00AM for a little pizza to fuel up before taking a short trek over to the San Francisco Food Bank at 12:00PM.

Please send an email to communityaffairs@yfpa.org expressing your interest or if you have any questions!

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San Francisco Food Bank (www.sffoodbank.org)

What do we do?

We collect donated food from growers, manufacturers and grocers, then distribute it to people in need through food pantries, soup kitchens, child care centers, homeless shelters, senior centers and other human service agencies with meal programs. All in all, we will distribute 31 million pounds of food this year to hungry people in San Francisco.
How do we do it?

Every day, we sort, inspect and repackage thousands of pounds of food. The food comes from supermarket chains, large manufacturers, wholesalers, restaurant suppliers, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and food drives. To maximize our resources, we collaborate with other food banks and with the America's Second Harvest food bank network.
Specifics, please?

Nearly 500 local agencies, including AIDS service organizations, child care and senior programs, community centers, food pantries, shelters and soup kitchens, visit our warehouse on a weekly basis. As part of our Shopping Program, they select from a wide variety of packaged foods and fresh produce to provide nutritious meals for their clients. We also support our agencies' efforts to distribute food to low-income households for preparation at home. We provide groceries and fresh produce to dozens of food pantries throughout the City-and we help many of these same agencies distribute USDA commodities to families and individuals in need. Through the Neighborhood Grocery Network we're working to establish food pantries in neighborhoods that lack community food resources.

Through our Brown Bag Program, we also assist low-income seniors by providing them with a bag of groceries every other week. With the help of more than 100 social service agencies, we provide an emergency lifeline for low-income people confronted with a health, family or employment crisis: through our Emergency Food Box Program, families and individuals receive a three-day supply of food within hours of placing a request. And when a disaster, such as an earthquake, strikes the entire city, we are poised to distribute emergency food supplies to low-income neighborhoods through our Disaster Relief Program.