It's like a game of Tetris.
Arranging the packages of donated food into a stable matrix on the Boulder Food Rescue bike trailer can be a challenge for volunteer Christina Gosnell. She enjoys the puzzle, and though more donations mean a heavier load for her to pull, she beams with a beatific expression.
Gosnell, who works full-time as operations director of the Boulder-based nonprofit Clean Energy Action, is also one of 150 active volunteers delivering food from nearly 20 markets and food retailers around Boulder to more than 30 destinations. The food is an important part of the diets of a wide range of people in need of healthy food, from runaway youth to low-income senior citizens and homeless families.
To avoid climate-changing pollutants in its activities, nearly 90 percent of the organization's volunteers deliver the food on 80 routes a week by bike. Since 2011, when Boulder Food Rescue was founded, more than 550,000 pounds of edible food was redirected from a path to landfills to feed the hungry in Boulder. A study of deliveries to one client, Bridge House, estimated that rescued food represented 66 percent of the fresh fruits and vegetables served at the resource center for the homeless.
Crawford says 45 percent of households served by Sister Carmen's food pantry have at least one person working; the households without a working member include those actively looking for jobs as well as disabled or elderly individuals who cannot hold down jobs. "Recently more people who are considered as middle-class need assistance. People who were not asking for assistance in the past are asking for assistance now," she says.
Sister Carmen serves eastern Boulder County, and has a thrift store as well as support services such as application help for public benefits and English-language and economic-stability classes. Residents of the city of Boulder, Longmont and the mountain towns are served by other food pantries, such as Emergency Family Assistance Association, Harvest of Hope and O.U.R. Center. These nonprofits' food pantries receive food from a variety of sources, including donors, food drives and larger food banks like Community Food Share.
Although he has earned certificates in computer tech support and network engineering, a 20-year-old prison record and past problems with drugs, alcohol and depression make it hard for Joseph to get a better-paying job. His wife has had challenges of her own. In 1995, before she met Joseph, she was left in debt, lost the mobile home she owned and was living in a shelter after her ex-husband went to prison.
The couple went through bankruptcy a few years ago, rents their townhouse and has no credit, so Joseph's wife budgets their money carefully and clips coupons while he drives a $500 car to make ends meet. Still, health issues or injuries—like an accident that resulted in a $160,000 medical bill—can mean no money is left for food.
Joseph's son and daughter go to Centaurus High School and are eligible for free or reduced-price lunches, along with 31 percent of their classmates. But his son is so embarrassed by it that he makes his own peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to take to school. Kids can feel stigmatized by hunger, cautions Ann Cooper, the director of food services for the Boulder Valley School District. Though the free- and reduced-lunch program does not publicly identify students, she says, people need to understand that bullying can happen when other students find out.
Boulder County Housing & Human Services locally oversees the federal food-assistance program called SNAP, which was formerly known as food stamps. It provides clients with electronic pay cards that can be used at supermarkets, including nontraditional ones like Target, Walmart and Whole Foods. Communications director Jim Williams views the system as a win/win for the larger community as well as the clients.
Tanya Ishikawa writes often for Boulder Magazine about humanitarian issues, politics and the arts.