#Good harvest food bank how to

Second Harvest is one of 40 nonprofits participating in the sixth annual Santa Cruz Gives holiday giving campaign, sponsored by Good Times. Willis fears that a similar pattern will emerge in the wake of the pandemic-and that demand will remain high for years to come.

Then this year, staffers and volunteers watched demand soar past that level. Sure enough, Willis says that during the Great Recession of 20, Second Harvest’s numbers jumped from 30,000 people picking up food per month to 50,000, and they never went down. “If people have to shelter-at-home and businesses are closed, it doesn’t take long before people are struggling to meet their basic material needs. “Our economy is one that, even in the best of times, many working and middle-class families are living paycheck-to-paycheck and aren’t able to prepare for a time like this when the economy goes south,” says Harding, whose research interests include poverty, inequality, urban communities, race, and the criminal justice system. So many Californians were already in a precarious spot. generally has high levels of economic inequality compared to other wealthy democratic countries. Harding says the pre-pandemic economy was actually pretty good at the start of 2020, in terms of markers like unemployment. UC Berkeley sociology professor David Harding agrees that workers in tourist industries often face dueling vulnerabilities: They work in boom-or-bust economies, in areas with a high cost of living.

#Good harvest food bank how to

“A lot of the work we’re trying to do is make sure people have access to the fresh produce, the lean proteins and the whole grains they need, but also the knowledge on how to use it.” “If you’re spending everything you have on rent and medical and gas, you don’t have the funds for food,” Willis says. That means families need help to feed themselves and to survive, even in a year without a pandemic. Part of the problem is that every year Santa Cruz County’s tourism and agricultural jobs dry up. After that, the number climbed to approximately 88,000-an increase of 60%. This was early in 2020, before the Covid-19 pandemic hit, prompting widespread business closures in March. Second Harvest Food Bank Development and Marketing Officer Suzanne Willis remembers when her Watsonville-based food pantry was serving about 55,000 people monthly, providing them with parcels of fresh produce and pantry staples.