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KERN BUSINESS JOURNAL
April / May 2016
Community Action Partnership of Kern Food Bank
Today’s nourishment, tomorrow’s future By Glen Ephrom
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ommunity Action Partnership of Kern’s Food Bank continues to toil in a seemingly endless task: the recurrent distribution of food to help our neighbors meet their nutritional needs. Moms, dads, children of all ages, the elderly, the disabled— people from all walks of life—may, at some point, need a little help making ends meet. Glen Ephrom Food is essential, but oftentimes folks are forced to make a difficult decision: “What is the most essential this day, this week or this month—food, clothing, housing, medication, utilities, transportation…?” That’s where we come in. With the benefit of governmental support, food agency partners, local agricultural donors, a generous community, tireless benefactors and hundreds of volunteers, we always seem to find a way to get things done. But hunger never takes a holiday. We distribute more than one million pounds of food each month. That’s more than 6,000 pounds per hour, every hour and every day. As one month ends, we begin another cycle. The Drought Our Drought Emergency Food Assistance Program (DEFAP) was introduced in May 2014 to support Kern County families adversely impacted by the drought. As unemployment in agriculture and related industries rose, so did the need for food
assistance. The majority of those affected were the children of under- and unemployed workers. To date, we have distributed more than 7,250,000 pounds of DEFAP food on top of our regular food distribution. Innovative Responses to Hunger Recognizing the acute need for nutritionally balanced diets to combat obesity and promote a healthier lifestyle locally, our Food Sourcer, Maureen Andrew—who was featured in a Kern Business Journal article in spring 2015—works daily with our partners in agriculture, staying in regular contact with growers and processors as we work together to find ways to get donations of fresh fruits and vegetables to those in need. And through consistent availability of products and ongoing education programs, we can effectively help craft positive lifestyle changes to benefit the families we serve. What else do we do? More than 75 percent of our operations (food sorting, stocking, deliveries, etc.) are staffed by volunteers. Many of them come to us via partnerships, such as programs designed to transition those in need to active employment. The Employment Preparation Program (EPP) is a welfare-to-work platform that provides participants with an opportunity to obtain valuable real-world experience and skills to be successful in the workplace. The Owens Valley Career Development Center is another similar program for Native Americans. SerJobs is geared toward our 55-and-over age group and provides much needed job skills training for the modern workplace. Each year at the Food Bank, we are able to introduce or reintroduce dozens of individuals to the
current workforce. A number of them have found full-time staff positions with us at the Food Bank. Get Involved What’s next? There are thresholds on governmental commodity programs. The CAPK Food Bank has taken on the challenge of sourcing and distributing greater amounts of fresh produce and fruits to our clients, in order to ensure the nutritional benefits of healthy eating for them. However, we need help. We need to solidify and reenergize many of our partnerships with local growers and
processors, matching the resource with the need. Together, we can make this happen but only if we all get involved. The CAPK Food Bank has the infrastructure, distribution channels and logistical capabilities. We need partners: all kinds, all sizes. If you think you can help, just give us a call at 398-4520, e-mail gephrom@capk. org or visit www.capk.org and click on “Donate” or “Volunteer.” – Glen Ephrom is Community Action Partnership of Kern’s Food Bank manager.
Biography Index—Finding Famous Individuals in Agriculture By Katherine Ross
L Clarence Birdseye, pioneer of frozen foods.
earn the facts about the great names in agriculture, instead of Internet gossip or rumors. The Kern County Library offers Ebsco Biography Reference Center 24/7, free with your library card and PIN (last 4 digits of your phone number). Simply navigate to http://kerncountylibrary.org/research/, scroll down and select Biography Research Center. Searching is as easy as typing a name; for example, a search for Cesar Chavez or Edward Fitzgerald Beale quickly connects you to one or more factual articles. There’s even a short biographical sketch of Allen Allensworth, who founded the Kern County
community that bears his name. For a more modern biographical subject, try searching Ted Turner. Or try Tom Camerlo, famous in the American dairy industry. You could even learn more about Clarence Birdseye, pioneer in frozen foods. Advanced Search offers even more ways to get biographies. You can search for people by occupation, nationality, place of birth or death, gender, or even by historical era [Lifespan]. There are 172 articles to be found just by searching for farmer. Results can also be limited to those in newspapers or in encyclopedias, and you can limit by year of publication. Articles may be printed, saved to disk, or emailed. Biography Research Center offers biographies of more than 9,000 individuals, from the classic source American National
Biography. Added to that, it also contains biographies drawn from more than 100 other sources, such as Biography Today and Business & Industry. It has biographies of famous people from all over the world, most averaging one or two pages but some more than 20 pages. In all, there are more than 430,000 full-text biographies. You might not find every famous person within this database, but you’re sure to encounter the modern and historical, the accomplished and the newsworthy, of a fascinating variety. And it’s all free with your Kern County Library card.
– Katherine Ross is a librarian at Beale Memorial Library, main branch of the Kern County Library System.