\t\t\tWhat started as curiosity has grown into a five-year volunteer journey at the Food Bank.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Every week, in the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank\u2019s busy warehouse humming with forklifts, conveyor belts, and volunteers, you\u2019ll find Art Salter suited up and ready to work. He\u2019s not there because he has to be. He\u2019s there to give back.<\/p>\n
Salter\u2019s relationship with hunger relief didn\u2019t start at the Food Bank. It started 18 years earlier, at a partner organization called MEND, where he had been volunteering long before. But curiosity got the better of him.<\/p>\n
\u201cI always wanted to see where the food came from,\u201d Art explains.\u00a0<\/p>\n
One day, he made the drive out to the Food Bank\u2019s former warehouse in the City of Commerce to see the other side of the operation, the side that supplies the food to hundreds of partner agencies throughout LA County and then distributes it to families in need. To say the least, he was blown away by the Food Bank\u2019s operation and organization.\u00a0<\/p>\n
What started off as volunteering once a week turned into two days a week, on top of other volunteering endeavors.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s surprising to me that we can produce so much within a three-hour period,\u201d Salter says of a typical volunteer shift. In that window, volunteers can pack anywhere from 800 to 2,000 boxes of food, a scale of production that Salter still finds remarkable, even after years of watching it happen.<\/p>\n
Seeing Both Sides of the Need<\/p>\n
What makes Salter\u2019s perspective unique is that he sees hunger from two vantage points. At MEND, he watches people line up as early as 6:30 in the morning for a food distribution that doesn\u2019t open until nine. At the Food Bank, he sees where that food comes from before it ever reaches those lines.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s very sad that I see people line up,\u201d he says, \u201cbut the people are very appreciative. And it\u2019s nice for me to see both sides of what we do.\u201d<\/p>\n
That dual perspective has only sharpened his sense of urgency about food insecurity in the County. \u201cA lot of people cannot afford to buy food,\u201d Salter says. \u201cThe price of fruit, vegetables, and things that are really healthy are very expensive. We\u2019re seeing that people are going hungry. That motivates me to go and get back to the community.\u201d<\/p>\n
Together, We Feed LA<\/p>\n
Salter\u2019s generosity isn\u2019t limited to his time on the warehouse floor. As a business owner who has built a successful career, he\u2019s long been moved by the people he\u2019s seen struggling. He wanted to help, and that\u2019s what led him to look for an organization he trusted, one where he knew the support he provided would reach the people who genuinely needed it. Additionally, Salter also represents the Max Factor Family Foundation, advocating for grant funding to organizations across the community, including the Food Bank.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Every bit of support helps the Food Bank reach the more than one million neighbors who seek food assistance each month. Volunteer<\/a> or donate<\/a> today and see the impact for yourself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"What started as curiosity has grown into a five-year volunteer journey at the Food Bank.\u00a0 Every week, in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":398466,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[160051,15291,23924,57738,6098,6100,3400,48,6105,52,51,47,137,50,49,6106,160052,6107,136,1597,7597],"class_list":["post-398465","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-art-salter","tag-donate","tag-donor","tag-donor-spotlight","tag-fighting-hunger","tag-food-bank","tag-food-insecurity","tag-la","tag-la-county","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-county","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-los-angeles-regional-food-bank","tag-mend","tag-nutrition-insecurity","tag-top-stories","tag-volunteer","tag-volunteering"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398465","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=398465"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398465\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/398466"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=398465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=398465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=398465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}