According to Vince Hall, CEO of Feeding San Diego, our city doesn’t have a food shortage problem. That’s because 40% of the food in the county gets thrown away every day, which is “more than enough to solve the problem of hunger,” says Hall. Instead, “We have a food distribution problem,” Hall says.
Feeding San Diego is the county’s leading hunger relief agency that works to alleviate food insecurity in the region by rescuing food from over 500 locations. They then redistribute it—up to 85% of which is fresh, healthy produce—to key places where food insecurity is most prominent.
Over 400,000 people in San Diego County alone are classified as “food insecure,” which is defined as having a lack of available financial resources for food on a regular or sporadic basis. But there’s a difference between a feeling of hunger and the long-term implications of food insecurity, a point that Hall is quick to identify.
“No one is just hungry,” says Hall. “Hunger is always accompanied by other economic challenges.”
When the deadly Hepatitis A outbreak that claimed 20 lives in San Diego spread through San Diego’s homeless population in 2017, thousands of people already struggling with lack of housing, healthcare, and other social services found themselves in an especially vulnerable situation. That’s when Feeding San Diego teamed up with Lucky Duck Foundation to provide easier access to resources.
“It is a privilege to work with an organization that prides itself on maximizing resources, teamwork, and helping those in need,” says Drew Moser, executive director at Lucky Duck Foundation. Moser immediately saw the benefit of joining forces with a logistics operation that harbored a similar capacity for empathy. By leveraging Feeding San Diego’s already-established distribution network, Lucky Duck is now better able to give support to those most affected by economic challenges.
Both Moser and Hall lament that the conversations around San Diego’s homeless population (which Hall calls a “humanitarian crisis”) tend to get caught up in the debate about affordable housing. Moser hopes that by partnering with more rescue programs like Feeding San Diego, they’ll be able to demonstrate moral and financial value to policymakers when it comes to addressing homelessness.
“There is a critical need for affordable housing and temporary shelter beds in our region. By increasing strategic partnerships through some of the rescue programs that Feeding San Diego offers, significant savings have been realized. Yet, we believe there is still much room to grow and savings to be realized, which is something we focus on daily,” says Moser.
Like Moser, Hall is glad to have found a like-minded group to help tackle the most immediate needs San Diegans without housing face every day.
“What I admire about Dan [Shea, on the board of directors of Lucky Duck Foundation] and the rest of the crew at Lucky Duck is the ability to not see it as a choice between building housing and providing shelter, but as a moral imperative that we do both,” says Hall.
By joining up with Feeding San Diego, Moser says that they’ve been able to distribute over 1,500 community care kits so far, which are backpacks filled with “items such as hygiene kits, sweatshirts, sweatpants, socks, stocking caps, shower shoes, water and snacks, and other necessities.”
Despite the progress they’ve made together, Hall admits it can seem like they are up against overwhelming odds. With the help of Lucky Duck Foundation, he hopes to remove some of the stigma behind these issues.
“The reality is that these people can be helped,” says Hall. “What I love about organizations like Lucky Duck Foundation is that there’s an underlying respect for the inherent humanity of every human being, and that everybody is entitled to be treated with dignity and respect.”
HOW CAN YOU HELP?
Dontate money
Donate time
Donate food and clothing
Attend fundraising events
Write to political leaders
Become advocates in your community
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