State grants help CAPK supply its nonprofit partners with commercial fridges, freezers
Last year, Community Action Partnership of Kern distributed more than 20 million pounds of food to food-insecure residents in Kern County.
At the same time, the nutritional value of the food was increasing, along with the amounts and varieties of fresh vegetables and fruits.
But there was a problem.
"We have a lot of local growers who donate things like lettuce and chard and celery and broccoli and cauliflower," said Jeff Marsh, operations supervisor at the Wonderful Community Food Center at CAPK's food bank in southeast Bakersfield.
"You really got to be able to keep that refrigerated," Marsh said. "That's really what we've focused on being able to do recently, is increase the nutritional value of what we are distributing."
On Monday, the huge food warehouse received a delivery of critical food storage equipment at its center on South Washington Street. The new equipment included 35 commercial-grade refrigerators and 20 commercial freezers.
Still on the way are storage shelves, hand trucks and other tools of the food storage industry.
But this equipment, these tools, are not for CAPK, they are for what CAPK Food Bank Administrator Kelly Lowery calls "our partners on the front lines of hunger relief."
About a year and a half ago, Lowery said, CAPK contracted with a research firm to perform a study of food insecurity in Kern.
"What they found in their study, by reaching out to all of our agency partners and others involved in the work, is that this (issue) of not having the capacity to accept, store and distribute more food was one of the main barriers to them being able to serve more families."
CAPK works with scores of agency partners across the county, including churches, community centers, ministries and other nonprofits that do the work of getting that 20 million pounds of food into the hands of families who need it. But many are short on refrigerator and freezer space.
"We're getting a fridge and a freezer," said Anthony Myers, co-founder of Safe Haven Kids League & Community Resources, a nonprofit in California City.
According to Myers, shortage of cold-storage and freezer space forces the nonprofit to drive from Cal City to Bakersfield three times per week to keep fresh and frozen food available for their clients who not only come from Cal City, but drive in from Mojave, Boron, North Edwards and other desert communities.
"Once a week, we offer our community meat," Myers said. "We call it Meat Tuesday.
"We open at 10 a.m. but by 8 o'clock, there are 40-plus people in line," he said.
Earlier this year, Safe Haven was named the 34th Assembly District's nonprofit of the year by Assemblyman Tom Lackey. Once the new refrigerator and freezer are installed, Myers said, he thinks they can do even better for the people who rely on them.
Tehachapi-area residents Rosa Perez and her husband, Jess, were also on hand Monday at the morning announcement at CAPK. They also are adding a refrigerator and freezer to improve the food storage capacity for the nonprofit St. Vincent de Paul Society at St. Malachy Catholic Church.
"We didn't have enough room for our perishables, so we'd let them sit out," said Rosa Perez. "We'd have to hurry up and give them to our families in need because we had no refrigeration to put them in.
"That was our problem."
Being provided with a refrigerator and a freezer helps tremendously, Perez said. And as rents rise in the mountain communities, food insecurity is growing.
"This is a total blessing," she said.
