Westside Food Bank
Since the crawl began in 2008, the event has raised enough for a half a million meals. For every $5 raised, the Westside Food Bank turns that into 20 meals!
Want to know more about the Westside Food Bank?
Watch this video
www.wsfb.org
Westside Food Bank’s mission is to end hunger in our communities by providing access to free nutritious food through food acquisition and distribution, and by engaging the community and advocating for a strong food assistance network.
Westside Food Bank is the primary source of food for more than 55 organizations with food assistance programs in West Los Angeles County. Its balanced variety of nutritious food reaches families with children, seniors, veterans, college students, people experiencing homelessness, unemployed and low-wage workers and now, tens of thousands of additional households that are newly food-insecure due to the effects of COVID-19, which has tripled the local need for food assistance. Westside Food Bank has doubled its wholesale food purchases and is committed to keeping up its enhanced level of service for as long as necessary to make sure people have access to food during this crisis and beyond. Community support is vital to WSFB’s operations - every donated dollar translates into four nutritious meals for local people in need, and nearly half of the food goes to children.
Westside Food Bank’s food will reach over 200,000 people this year, about double the pre-COVID number.
New initiatives include:
- A pop-up food pantry at Virginia Avenue Park formed in partnership with the City of Santa Monica that is serving hundreds of families each week.
- Partnering with Meals on Wheels West to deliver groceries to homebound seniors along with their hot meals.
- A new monthly drive-through food pantry for veterans at the West LA VA.
- Suspension of agency fees so partner agencies get all of WSFB’s food completely free of charge.
- More than tripling the amount of food going to college students in need at Santa Monica College, UCLA, and Mount Saint Mary’s University.
- Doubling the amount of food given to member food pantries, residential programs for families with children, and to hot meals programs.
- Providing produce and donated food to new grassroots food distributions.