What We Do
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.
Over
17 years
serving Marin seniors and others
Over
3 million
pounds of perfectly good food distributed (and not in the landfill)
A total value of approximately
$80 million
dollars!
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, most mornings, we go to a major grocery store in Mill Valley and pick up their donations. Later each morning, we pick up at other markets in four different locations. Every Thursday and Sunday, we pick up from the vendors at the Farmer’s Market at the Civic Center. Every Sunday, we pick up from a major store in Novato, and every night we pick up at another large store in Novato.
How All Of That Surplus Goes Out:
Each week we have two open Food Days at:
- The Bolinas Community Food Program (Sunday afternoon at 1 PM in the field next to the fire station on Mesa Road)
- Trinity Community Church in San Rafael (Thursday mornings at 11:30 AM at 1675 Grand Ave)
On Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, we deliver to seven different lower income complexes housing seniors and others, 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.
We also serve the anchor-outs in Sausalito. Our volunteers are all part of our food distribution network as well, taking care of people they know personally who could use some extra food to help make ends meet.
