Before we head into the new year, we wanted to take a little time to reflect on the beast that was 2022! Thanks to our donors and volunteers, we were able to grow our small organization in a sustainable way, and we look forward to new endeavors in 2023.

Over 15,000 pounds diverted in 2022!
We diverted 15,977 pounds of good food from a landfill this year! A huge shout out to our volunteer Joshua, who has been consistently picking up food every Sunday for almost 2 years now. We also want to shout out our new volunteer Joe, who helps us out by picking up the food we recover on Tuesdays for our Wednesday meal prep! Dedication & consistency like this makes our work possible.

Since we started our work in May 2021, we have been able to recover 27,073 pounds of food, and this work would be impossible without our volunteers!

We would like to thank our OG Sunday volunteers for coming out rain or shine (but mostly shine, because hey.. it's SoCal) to bag and deliver groceries to unhoused folks: Deanna, Jan, Joshua, Matthew, Theo, Father Andy, Andrew, Lyn, Kris, Shanti, Imani, Parker & more.. we love you all!

We started a new food recovery program!
With the help of our community partner Palms Unhoused Mutual Aid (PUMA), we were able to start a new food recovery program on Wednesdays. Each week we recover trays of prepared food from a local food bank and repurpose them into individual meals for unhoused folks. We were lucky enough to get some hot food from a few movie sets too! Since starting this program in October, we have recovered 1769 pounds of food from these sources and made them into 934 meals. This new program is super exciting, and we look forward to recovering more prepared food in 2023 to make even more meals.

A special shout out to our Wednesday volunteers and the whole PUMA team who hand deliver all the meals during their outreach: Marie, David, Phoebe, Joe, Bineh, Danielle, Erin, Ndindi, Joshua, the entire PUMA team, & more.. you all are amazing!

Bringing Food to Project Roomkeys
After learning unhoused folks who live in Project Roomkeys (PRK) were not getting fed, we cohosted two events to bring folks meals and sign them up for CalFresh. Thank you to Hunger Action LA and Palms Unhoused Mutual Aid for partnering with us on these events. We look forward to hosting more in the future.

We were joined by so many amazing new + returning volunteers for these actions. Thank you to everyone who made it out!

Financing Food for LA Neighbors for Neighbors
This year we were able to help out our community partner, LAN4N, by funding their meal purchases for a few months. If you're unfamiliar with LAN4N, they are an organization that hosts a monthly resource center for unhoused folks. Their chef Noah makes delicious rice and bean bowls for everyone to enjoy. We were so happy to fund this venture for about six months! At their last resource center, we also set up a bagel & cream cheese table for volunteers and guests to enjoy as well.

Our Plans for 2023
1. New Partnerships!
We are starting two new partnerships in 2023 which will help us recover even more food. More details on this later, but we are SO excited!

2. At-Home Chefs!
We are able to recover lots of bread items (bagels, loaves of bread, english muffins, etc), bagged snacks (pretzels, popcorns), and tons of desserts. To make use of this recovered food, we have been repurposing the bread into sandwiches and making bagged lunches with all the other goodies. However, we are only able to do this when we have enough volunteer capacity. In an effort to expand this, we are piloting a new program of at-home chefs. Volunteers will be given the necessary ingredients and supplies on a weekly basis to make 20 meals from the comfort of their own home. We will be piloting this new program this January. If you live in West LA and would like to help out with this, email us at [email protected] to get involved!

Thanks again for your continued support! We look forward to more mutual aid in 2023!