The Volunteer Center South Bay-Harbor-Long Beach will hold its inaugural spring food drive from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday, April 11, at its Torrance headquarters, 1230 Cravens Ave.<\/p>\n
The center provides hundreds of thousands of free meals per year to 16 schools throughout the South Bay and Long Beach, in addition to their food pantries in Torrance and Long Beach that are open three days a week.<\/p>\n
To support this need, the Volunteer Center has typically held a fall food drive and that, in addition to donations throughout the year, has always been sufficient. But in October and November, the nonprofit saw a 237% increase in meals being needed, with the center providing 8,300 free meals per week.<\/p>\n
A large portion of the increased need is coming from the nonprofit\u2019s Food For Kids Program, according to program coordinator Jon Phelps. The program, created in 2009, provides a weekend\u2019s worth of meals for a four-member family at 16 schools in the South Bay and Long Beach.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is for the benefit of children in the lowest income neighborhoods in our community,\u201d Phelps said. \u201cSo we serve the South Bay, Harbor, Long Beach areas. And in those communities, we noticed that students were coming back to school hungry on Mondays and that really was hampering their ability to learn and focus in school. Those families need support.\u201d<\/p>\n
These meals account for the majority of meals the center delivers, with more than 6,000 of the 8,300 meals per week going to those families.<\/p>\n
This need has derived from the loss of SNAP benefits for many families in 2025, said Josh Gezahegn, president and CEO of the Volunteer Center South Bay-Harbor-Long Beach.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s also some additional requirements now in terms of just qualifying for benefits that are impacting students and families and then the rising cost of everything,\u201d Gezahegn said. \u201cRising cost of goods that really significantly hampers family\u2019s ability to purchase food. Everything is just a lot more expensive than it used to be.\u201d<\/p>\n
Now, just a handful of months after the center received about 30,000 pounds of food from the fall food drive, their resources are severely depleted.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll of that food is gone,\u201d Gezahegn said. \u201cWe\u2019re not going to be able to sustain the output.\u201d<\/p>\n
So the center is asking for help.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur community has always stepped up when we\u2019ve asked for help,\u201d Gezahegn said. \u201cSo, we\u2019re optimistic that we\u2019re going to get good output. We\u2019ve been around for six decades and it\u2019s all about neighbors helping neighbors. This is one way that everyone can get involved.\u201d<\/p>\n
The center will accept any nonperishables, but the most needed food items are canned fruit, cereal, peanut butter, jelly, pasta, pasta sauce and rice.<\/p>\n
Those who are unable to make it to the food drive can drop off donations at their headquarters anytime from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday to Friday.<\/p>\n
Those in need can visit the Volunteer Center food pantries. The Torrance Food Pantry is open from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. on the first and third Thursday of each month, and the Long Beach Food Pantry is open from 11 a.m. to noon Wednesdays and from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. Fridays.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Volunteer Center South Bay-Harbor-Long Beach will hold its inaugural spring food drive from 10 a.m. to 4…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":260690,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[7,179,23,131,133,132,137,200,136,1270],"class_list":{"0":"post-260689","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-long-beach","8":"tag-california","9":"tag-community","10":"tag-local-news","11":"tag-long-beach","12":"tag-long-beach-headlines","13":"tag-long-beach-news","14":"tag-los-angeles-county","15":"tag-south-bay","16":"tag-top-stories","17":"tag-torrance"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260689","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=260689"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260689\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/260690"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=260689"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=260689"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=260689"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}