No large-scale aid program, no matter how carefully designed, can ever even hope to address the needs of individuals, even though individuals make up 100% of their target clients. So they try to be “fair” by being “equitable,” by spreading it evenly, which is invariably neither fair nor equitable. In our program, the woman with a son who is suddenly out of work will be able to step in instantly with free food for his family, and with the help and blessings of her entire community. Because it’s coming from Grammy and her friends, it will continue not just until he finds another job, but until they can comfortably afford to do without it, and her whole community will be helping her help them in all kinds of little ways that really add up. This special treatment isn’t just for residents and relatives – it’s for anybody that any of us care enough about to want to help.
Our program can do things no other aid program has ever been able to do before, like targeting individual needs and seeing that those who need the most get the most, precisely because our program builds communities and it is those communities that do the distribution. And the real beauty of it is that we don’t have to control or regulate anything unless a problem develops.
What happens on a weekly basis:
We deal mostly with fresh food, so whatever we pick up at any particular location gets delivered immediately to people who can use that food.
What Comes In
Right now, early every morning, we go to a major store in Mill Valley and pick up their donations. Later each morning, we pick up at smaller markets in four different locations. Every night, and on Sunday morning, we pick up at a large store in Novato and once a week we get a donation from a local market in San Marin.
How All Of That Surplus Goes Out:
Right now, each week we have a total of three open Food Days at:
- The Bolinas Community Center Food Program (Sunday afternoon at 1PM)
- The Salvation Army in San Rafael (Wednesday mornings at 10:30 AM)
- Iglesia Nueva Jerusalem Church in Novato (Friday mornings at 10:30 AM)
On Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, we deliver to five different senior housing complexes, where the residents gather together in their community rooms to sort out and then share the food among themselves. You can see a video of one of these locations in the right sidebar of our website.
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