Volunteers at Shiloh Mercy House, an ACCFB agency partner, helping distribute fresh produce in Oakland.
As we launch our new strategic vision, we’re taking the first steps on an intentional path towards food justice. Starting with the basics, we’re strengthening and improving the core work we do—with over 400 agency partners—to get food to the community. We call it “right food, right place, right time,” and its success hinges on centering community and partners in all our decision making.
The right food means food people actually want and choose. The right place and time means getting the right food to people in a way that fits easily into their life, with respect and dignity.
Here are some of the many ways we’re working to get the right food to the right place at the
right time:
Honoring Culture Through Food
ACCFB coordinated with vendors and agencies to provide extra masa and corn husks, both of which can be expensive in stores, for Latino families making tamales around the holidays. This led to positive feedback from agencies who shared that their communities enjoyed the tamale ingredients—and reduced strains on their grocery budgets. ACCFB is working to supply more culturally relevant foods at specific times when demand is high, like holidays and celebrations.
A volunteer with fresh corn and citrus in ACCFB’s warehouse.
Sowing Seeds
The Food Bank is incubating Dig Deep Farms, a BIPOC-led farm in the Fremont-Newark area, to be a robust source of food in the community and strengthen the local food system and supply chain. In addition to Dig Deep Farms, we are building more partnerships with local BIPOC farmers to help provide culturally specific produce to neighboring communities.
An ACCFB volunteer arranges boxes of fresh-grown kale from Dig Deep Farms.
Fueling Futures
ACCFB partners with Oakland-based charity Eat. Learn. Play. and their mobile resource bus—visiting two to three Oakland elementary schools each week. Students receive snacks prepared by Community Kitchens, along with fresh produce and groceries from ACCFB and books curated by the Oakland Literacy Coalition. The Food Bank also sends its Mobile Pantry truck, full of groceries and fresh produce, to offer convenient located supplemental meal support to families, right at their kids’ schools. To date, the Eat. Learn. Play. Bus has been a part of over 110 distribution and civic events, visiting all 49 public elementary schools in the Oakland Unified School District.
Students and families pick up books and food at an Eat. Learn. Play. distribution.
These are just a few of the many ways that the right food, right place, right time framework shapes our approach to food distribution, sourcing, partnership, and more. And it doesn’t stop there. We’re collaborating with our community partners and forming new connections to hear and understand the needs of the community, directly from the community. If you have ideas, requests, or experiences to share, we’re always open to hearing from you! Please don’t hesitate to reach out to info@accfb.org.
