FOOD BANK PROGRAMS Emergency Food Assistance Program
Snack Attack
Operating through forty-seven USDA commodity sites and 105 pantries the CAPK Food Bank provides emergency food assistance throughout Kern County to food insecure residents.
The Food Bank provides healthy foods to after-school programs. With this program we are able to serve over 2,500 kids on a monthly basis at Corporation for Better Housing, Friendship House, Garden Pathways, and Stay Focused.
The CAPK Senior Food Program is a USDA-funded program designed to provide low-income seniors with a 30-lb box of healthy food items such as milk, cereal, protein, fruits, and vegetables each month. This program helps vulnerable seniors from having to choose between food and other basic needs.
CAPK’s BackPack Buddies (BPB) program works to alleviate hunger by providing children who do not have enough to eat at home with wholesome, ready-to-eat foods before weekends and holiday breaks during the school year. The program helps counteract health and behavior effects of child hunger such as weakened immunity, low height for age, slower cognitive development, lack of concentration, aggression, poor academic performance, and more. Food items from the CAPK Food Bank (either purchased or donated canned or packaged proteins, fruits and vegetables, grains, and shelf-stable dairy products) are provided discreetly in drawstring reusable backpacks to prescreened low-income children who fit the profile for chronically hungry or who qualify for free or reduced-price school meals and live in food insecure households: i.e., households where consistent access to adequate food is limited due to a lack of finances or resources.
CSFP, or Senior Food Program
Farmer’s Markets
Our Farmer’s Markets distribute food in Arvin, Lamont, and at the Kern County Fairgrounds, and in partnership with area churches and charities. In addition, for several years The Wonderful Company has been providing additional financial support to the communities of Delano and Wasco at our existing Farmer’s Market locations. The Wonderful Company will be expanding their financial support to cover the Shafter area in the coming months. CAPK Farmer’s Markets held monthly distributions between March and September 2019. They served 7,623 families and gave out 550,991 pounds of fresh produce. These Farmer’s Markets are stocked thanks to donations from local agricultural producers. Through their generous donations, we can provide families in need with fresh juices, potatoes, citrus, leafy greens, broccoli, onions, and so much more of Kern County’s harvest.
8 Feed Kern Now
BackPack Buddies Program
Community Action Partnership of Kern
