On Thursday, August 12, New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson announced he is dedicating funds from the Recovery Act that will benefit the six food banks in the state including The Food Depot.
Approximately $950,000 will be allocated to the New Mexico Association of Food Banks. The New Mexico Human Services Department will contact with the Association to purchase food such as produce, peanut butter and canned products to help feed the increasing numbers of hungry New Mexicans in our state.
It is estimated the funds will provide about 40 truckloads of food for hungry people throughout New Mexico.
THE FOOD DEPOT ESTABLISHES MOBILE FOOD PANTRY PROGRAM New Program serving 16 communities and reaching more than 1,000 households
In an effort to reduce barriers to food distribution in small remote areas throughout Northern New Mexico, The Food Depot has launched a Mobile Food Pantry program. The Mobile Food Pantry is a food distribution program in which food is delivered by The Food Depot to a designated location for immediate distribution to hungry people with no need for long term storage. The Food Depot is currently serving 16 communities – more than 1,020 households – with its newly established Mobile Food Pantry program.
In late 2009, The Food Depot welcomed 2.5 counties – Union, Harding and a portion of Colfax not already served by the food bank - to its service area, creating a service area of more than 26,000 square miles. The service area is larger than many east coast states and presents a significant challenge in getting food to outlying areas. Much of the food bank’s service area is rural, making it difficult to reach many small isolated and impoverished communities where there is great need. Many of those communities don’t have the resources to provide emergency food assistance to their hungry citizens, i.e. storage capacity and food availability.
To establish the program, The Food Depot teamed up with the Office for Community Health at the University of New Mexico’s (UNM) Health Sciences in a project funded by the Kellogg Foundation. The UNM project – EAT (Everyone At the Table) – was designed to facilitate the partnering of community organizations, students, food banks and health professionals to bring mobile food pantry and health services to rural communities. While clients received their supplemental food, they also received nutrition information, health screenings and flu shots, for example. Through this project, The Food Depot launched mobile food pantry sites in Sapello and Pecos in the county targeted by the team – San Miguel. The team established a site in Wagon Mound in Mora County as well. The Food Depot also partnered with the health councils in San Miguel and Mora Counties and the New Mexico Department of Health’s Community Health Improvement Coordinator in its region to further its work in those counties.
In addition, The Food Depot teamed up with Las Clinicas del Norte to establish Mobile Food Pantries in Rio Arriba County in the communities of El Rito, Abiquiu and Ojo Caliente at the community health centers.
During the transition to serving the newly acquired counties, The Food Depot worked with its sister food bank in Clovis to identify distribution outlets in Union, Harding and Colfax Counties. As a result, the food bank set up Mobile Food Pantry sites in Raton, Cimarron, Maxwell and Springer in Colfax County; Mosquero and Roy in Harding County; and Amistad, Clayton, Des Moines and Sedan in Union County. All Mobile Food Pantry sites receive monthly deliveries of food such as produce, bakery items and USDA commodities.
The Food Depot forges partnership with Santa Fe Community Farm
The Food Depot, Northern New Mexico’s food bank and the Santa Fe Community Farm are expanding a unique partnership to benefit hungry New Mexicans.For many years the Farm has donated its entire output to those most in need, primarily through The Food Depot.Now the cycle of sustainability is complete as the loop is closed:The Food Depot provides damaged produce from stores to The Community Farm to add to its compost. The Farm in turn uses the compost to produce fresh nutritious fruits and vegetables for distribution to hungry New Mexicans through The Food Depot’s partner agencies.
The Food Depot receives donations of produce from local grocery stores when the stores pull the produce off of their shelves.The produce becomes unsellable when it’s bruised, beyond the ripened stage or damaged. Yet, much of this produce is good. Volunteers at the food bank sort through this donated produce and box up the items that are available for distribution.They find about 40 percent of the produce is unusable and therefore available for compost. The Community Farm picks up the produce for compost, which then is used to work its magic in the fields.
“Staff at The Food Depot is dedicated to seeing that NO FOOD goes into the dumpster,” said Sherry Hooper, executive director of The Food Depot.“This new partnership offered us the opportunity to ensure that produce deemed unsuitable for consumption could be used to produce fresh nutritious fruits and vegetables for hungry people in the community.”
“This partnership means that all economic groups have the pleasure of eating locally,” added Carolyn Stephenson, executive director of The Community Farm [and daughter-in-law of John Stephenson, the Farm’s founder].“The growth of the Farm’s fields is symbolic of the growth of community; the lessons that we learn growing soil and plants we also apply to growing cooperative relationships.It is a happy never-ending story of sustainability.”
The Community Farm serves as an agricultural education center for Santa Fe County with a commitment to charitable donation of fresh fruits and vegetables to the hungry, homeless and disabled in the area. It offers to a wide variety of community groups of all ages and abilities opportunities to develop hands-on skills in sustainable agriculture and natural resource conservation.The farm fosters a deeper understanding of the role of local agriculture for food security and community.As a working model of small-scale urban food production, it provides a laboratory for developing knowledge while expanding local organic farming and sustainable agriculture practices.For more information on The Community Farm, visit their website: santafecommunityfarm.org or contact Carolyn Stephenson at 505-983-3033.
On May 8, letter carriers in thousands of cities and towns across America delivered much more than mail when they walked and drove along their postal routes.They also collected the goodness and compassion of their postal customers participating in the 18th annual NALC National Food Drive – the largest one-day food drive in the nation.Local letter carriers collected 11,172 pounds of food, providing 6,496 meals for people who are hungry!
Local businesses and schools pitched in this year by conducting a food drive in conjunction with the letter carriers.Customers, students, parents and employees also contributed food to the effort!
The Food Depot thanks the National Association of Letter Carriers for their tremendous support!The food bank also thanks Agua Fria Elementary, Salazar Elementary, Atalaya Elementary, Carlos Gilbert Elementary, Santa Fe Prep, Rio Grande Elementary, Acequia Madre Elementary, Alvord Elementary, EJ Martinez Elementary, Kaune Elementary, Gonzalez Elementary, Kearny Elementary, Nava Elementary, Wood Gormley Elementary, Eldorado Elementry, Walgreens in Espanola, All the Walgreens in Santa Fe, Trader Joes, Vitamin Cottage and Agora Supermarket in Eldorado.– for their help!A special thank you goes out to Mike Trujillo for coordinating this year’s effort!
The Food Depot is pleased to announce that it has received a grant of $10,000 from Newman’s Own Foundation in support of its Food 4 Kids program.
The Food Depot operates the Food 4 Kids program within the Santa Fe School District to help alleviate the growing crisis of childhood hunger in our community.During the 2009-2010 school year, The Food Depot has operated the Food 4 Kids program in 13 elementary schools (Agua Fria, Alvord, Cesar Chavez, Chaparral, Gonzales, Kaune, Kearny, Larragoite, Ramirez Thomas, Salazar, Sweeney, Tesuque, and Wood Gormley) in Santa Fe, providing weekly snacks to over 1,300 students. During the school year, the program also provided snacks to 2,500 third through sixth graders during testing weeks, after-school programs at multiple schools, and the occasional snack in many nurses’ offices for children who did not feel well or were unable to get breakfast.
“We are so grateful to Newman’s Own Foundation for their support of Food 4 Kids,” said Executive Director Sherry Hooper.“This generous gift allows the food bank to address the basic food needs of children whose families are unable to provide adequate amounts of food for them in the evenings and on weekends.”
Paul Newman was committed to helping make the world a better place. To carry on his philanthropic legacy, Newman’s Own Foundation donates all net royalties and profits after taxes from the sale of Newman’s Own products to charity.To date, Paul Newman and Newman’s Own Foundation have given over $285 million to thousands of charities around the world. For more information, visit www.newmansownfundation.org.
The Food Depot thanks Newman’s Own Foundation for their tremendous support of the battle against childhood hunger!
For more information on Food 4 Kids, please see detailed information on this website.
