|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
Come holiday season the need for food assistance among low-income communities starts to soar, in turn putting pressure on local food distribution services.
One of the nonprofits grappling with this reality is Ecumenical Hunger Program, an East Palo Alto-based nonprofit that received a $35,000 grant from The Almanac’s 2024 Holiday Fund.
“The funds allow us to purchase the necessities requested by our community,” said Lesia Preston, executive director of EHP, in an interview with this news organization.
This year, it has been particularly hard to get enough meat for the food boxes that the agency routinely hands out. “Our regular donor (Second Harvest Food Bank) we usually get turkeys from — they’re not giving them this year,” Preston said. “With this money we’ll be able to make sure we have the hams and turkeys and other necessities to make a very nice holiday box for our neighbors in need.”
Meeting the needs of families with special dietary requirements continues to be a priority for the team. “They don’t all eat the same,” she said. “We do serve a variety of ethnicities; some people don’t eat meat, they eat fish.”
Besides their food boxes, help from EHP also comes in the form of gift cards that people can use to purchase the meat or food of their choice. For Preston, the privilege of “choice” is the greatest gift. “It makes people feel a lot better when they’re able to make that choice,” she said.
For the team at EHP, scale has been the biggest change this year. “Hectic” is how Preston describes 2024. It’s been a year of long lines, more people to serve and growing demand for food. Besides food, they also give people hygiene products, furniture, clothing and common household items.
“Our numbers have increased,” she said. “We’ve run out of food many times.”
As per data shared by the nonprofit, this year over 15,400 hot meals were given out; over 24,500 individuals were served; over 39,500 food boxes were distributed; over 14,300 pieces of furniture and appliances were distributed; financial assistance of more than $785,000 was given to 422 high-risk families; more than 5,000 children were given resources; over 1,650 households visited the agency’s community closet; and approximately 10,000 volunteer hours were donated.
New property
Another big change at EHP this year relates to real estate. The team has acquired a new property at Weeks Street at East Palo Alto which is being used as a second warehouse, adjacent to, and in addition to, its existing property at Pulgas Street.
The new building is being used to store and display their palletized food. “We’re going to have metal shelving where we can do double level stacking of food,” Preston said. “It’s going to help us open up our food closet and expand it so clients can come in and ‘shop.’” The space is also being used for furniture distribution.
A lot of repairs are in order at the new place. “We need things fixed but we’re going to do it in phases,” she said. “So the blessing is, even though there’s a lot of work to be done, we are able to use that location for our holiday distribution.”
The space, she said, is taking pressure off their drive-up lines, which is a system they put in place during the COVID-19 pandemic but continued post-pandemic to meet the growing demand for food boxes. These drive-ups made it easy for seniors and people with disabilities to come and get their boxes because it spared them the trouble of parking far away and walking. The new building, though, has ample parking space, Preston said, glad that it will help the team go back to the way things were pre-COVID.
“We were holding up traffic, inconveniencing the bus line… a lot of complaints were coming in — it was horrible,” she admitted. And things only get worse in the holidays. “Even though we’ve been increasing our numbers each month, in November and December we always serve way more than we do the entire year.”
New clients
EHP was founded in 1975. Today, its primary service area includes East Palo Alto and East Menlo Park, but they frequently extend their programs beyond the local area. Recently, Preston shared, they served some families in the Fremont area and a few others who live as far as San Joaquin Valley, but work closer to the agency.
New people from different backgrounds have been coming into the community and consequently, onto EHP’s radar. “That’s always been a constant thing with East Palo Alto,” she said. The newer lot includes a lot of undocumented people who have migrated to the area. “We also see multiple households and multiple families in one address — that continues to increase all the time.”
The objective is to help these communities achieve social mobility. “We do a lot of advocacy and communication with clients about what we can do to help them get to another level in life,” she said.
Preston, who has been with EHP for around 30 years, takes pride in the fact that the agency is known for keeping people afloat during rough times.
“We might not be able to pull them out of the water immediately, but we try to sustain people so that they don’t drown further into what they’re going through,” she said, fondly recalling a time when one of their clients, who came from a home with a single mother, said to her: “EHP is the father.”
Ecumenical Hunger Program is one of the beneficiaries of The Almanac’s Holiday Fund. Donations are divided equally among this year’s 10 nonprofit organizations and 100% of the funds raised go directly to the recipients. Donations to the Holiday Fund can be made at almanacnews.com/holiday_fund.
YouTube 'auditor' provoked, pepper-sprayed shopper at Mountain View Costco, police sayApril 8, 2026 12:23 pm
