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Causes: Food, Food Banks & Pantries, Food Programs
Mission: To end hunger and transform the health of our community by providing nourishment to those in need by acquiring and distributing safe nutritious food via local agencies and by providing education to solve hunger and nutritional problems in santa barbara county.
Programs: Agency services program - distributes millions of pounds of food to over 300 agencies and programs countywide, through two warehouses located in santa barbara and santa maria. The program ensures that supplemental food providers throughout the county have access to nutritious food and produce for distribution.
produce initiative - the foodbank partners with the local, state and national agricultural industry to source a variety of healthy produce for recipients. About 45% of the foodbank's total food distribution is fresh produce.
direct to client programs - the foodbank has a variety of uniquely designed programs to both remedy and prevent food insecurity in underserved areas of santa barbara county, including mobile farmers markets and food pantries, brown bag, backpack, picnic in the park, and feed the future initiative brown bag program provides low-income seniors with two bags of groceries and fresh produce twice a month, supplementing their food costs. Volunteers deliver the bags to homebound seniors. Calfresh outreach - a bilingual community outreach coordinator conducts food stamp recruitment and assists with the application process, while offering perishable food. Feed the future initiative - a series of sequential, innovative programs designed to foster nutritional independence and health in children, from the womb to high school graduation. These programs provide hands-on food literacy education as well as increased access to fresh fruits and vegetables. Mobile community pantry - a program that rapidly distributes fresh produce to low-income families through a farmers market-like setting and provides countywide assistance to families by distributing perishables and nonperishable food to underserved communities. Nutritional education program - the foodbank is transforming the health of sant barabara county by building a long-term solution to hunger realted issues through food literacy. All foodbank uniquely designed programs include components of nutrition education.