Community Food Bank of So AZ

Health and Food Programs: Our Health & Food initiatives are broad efforts to increase access to healthy and culturally-relevant foods in order to prevent negative health outcomes and to strengthen regional food systems. During the Covid-19 pandemic, food distributions in southern Arizona was via our drive-through and /or walk-up distribution sites at our locations in Tucson, Amado, Green Valley, Marana, Willcox, and Nogales. We also continued food distribution through our network of 200+ partner agencies. In Feb. 2022, we discontinued our drive- and walk-through distributions because we re-opened building for in-person food distribution. 536,388 meals were distributed to seniors and our community through our Caridad Community Kitchen and 116,642 (TEFAP) and 88,227 (CSFP) unique individuals were served through our two major USDA programs: The Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP) and the Commodity Supplemental Food Program (CSFP). These numbers are approaching pre-pandemic level of service for these programs.Health disparities can largely be attributed to unequal access to healthy foods, in which socio- economic factors such as race, gender, income, and location of residence play a role. For food insecure populations, lack of access to healthy food often results in a wide variety of negative health outcomes like increased incidence and prevalence of diabetes, poor management of certain behavioral conditions, and social isolation.Our health and food efforts work across our service area to provide nutritious, culturally relevant foods to those who are experiencing hunger and adverse health outcomes. Our community health care partnerships help advance regional policy and has the potential to inform national policy.

Community Development Programs: We believe hunger and poverty are outcomes of broader systems and local policies that create a sense of powerlessness, resource inequity, and issues of under or over representation. Our community development work focuses on groups, organizations, and governments to create opportunities for change in these systems. We use initiatives that increase the capacity, engagement, and self-determination of community members and organizations to determine, enact, and sustain solutions to systemic problems and local issues. In the past fiscal year, we gave over $1.8 million in monetary grants to 52 partner organizations to maintain or improve services, education/training, and community development for a healthy, hunger-free community. About 700 people engaged in community-building events and trainings at Las Milpitas Community Farm and three new neighborhood coalitions were established to build citizens' capacity to improve their communities. Fifty-eight (58%) percent of total direct-to-consumer sales at market were in Public Assistance benefits. We saw $800,000 generated in local food sales through direct-to-consumer and institutional markets, which equated to $1,492,000 generated in the local economy. Within our community development efforts, we engage in three key tasks: empowerment, capacity building, and resilience. Through funding, technical assistance, and leadership development, we help to build resilient groups that are better able to weather storms and maintain healthy communities as new leaders develop and new needs arise.

Educational Programs: We believe resources and opportunities are inequitably distributed between communities, and that education can help build a bridge out of poverty toward improved socio-economic conditions. Since the pandemic, some of our education initiatives were virtual, others throughout the year were in-person and all promote learning and social connection through the facilitation of skill building, engagement, career readiness, and leadership development. Through various projects like our Farm to Child, school pantries, Health & Nutrition, we trained 2,003 K - 12 students in nutrition through classes and gardening. Throughout this past fiscal year, CFB provided 1,580 hours of skills and leadership education to 200 partner institutions and brought back in-person culinary training at our Caridad Community Kitchen to 12 students, totaling 3,600 hours. Additional nutrition education included 30 participants participating in our inaugural culinary workshops to support people living with diabetes in Nogales and Tucson. We also conducted 24 learning presentations focused on educating staff, partners and community member on the root causes of hunger, health and garden education. All of our efforts are grounded in the principles of cultural relevancy, self-determination, and social inclusion.