Food Access in Fairfax
There are a lot of questions that I wonder when it comes to food access. First off who is receiving it and from who in Fairfax. To attempt to understand the answer to this question I asked two different organizations in Fairfax what they do. Fairfax Community Church andFood for Other’s were willing to sit down for a quick interview at the end of April.
Karen Kellogg from Fairfax Community Church explained to me that they have a go local program and a go global program and both of them are dedicated to serving the community and helping others.
The FCC has a program called Stop Hunger now where they make meals that feed a family of six people. They were able to raise enough money to make meals for 142,560 families as it only cost about twenty five cents to make a meal. FCC works with 14 different partners to donate food their main programs that they work with are the LAMB center, the Katheryn K. Hanley Shelter which allows families to stay for up to 20 nights.
Nikki Clifford is the volunteer and operations manager so she works with the volunteers and runs the power pack program and purchases for the programs. One of the programs is the Emergency referral program so that is where a social worker lets them know that a family that they work with is in “an emergency situation and they are in need of food. A referral can be sent here and food can be given to the client.”
She fills in the holes with what food needs to be purchased like canned fruit, tomatoes, and chili. Niki also purchase for the power pack program that allows her to buy for elementary and middle school children so they can have food over the weekend. She purchases food that kids would like, ravoli, mac and cheese ect. She also purchases for Thanksgiving as that is the only holiday that they celebrate with their clients as it has no religious meaning to it.
Food for others is prevalent for Fairfax because it helps people that are low on money. They also have 29 community partners and they supplement for them by helping they purchase bulk items for people that need more food.
Another program is their neighborhood sites which is how Food for Others got started. At the various sites people meet up and receive food.
They are now working on power packs with 1500 packs and 24 different schools and they are all in Fairfax at the moment.
Both of these organizations are great and helpful to the community you can listen to part of my interview with Nikki here.
http://youtu.be/tu8XTaQmJfMEditor: Katie Pappas
Multimedia: Attie Pearsall
Community Manager: Asya Rojas
Data Journalist: Jennifer Garcia
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