FEEDING SAN DIEGO: Innovating, Changing Lives

New Video Highlights How Leading Hunger Relief Organization in the County Is Solving Hunger, Saving the Environment

SAN DIEGO – Feeding San Diego is transforming the way hunger relief organizations address the issue of hunger. As the leading hunger relief organization and the only Feeding America affiliate in the region, Feeding San Diego is innovating new logistical, technological, and relationship-building solutions to the problem of food insecurity, and making significant strides toward solving hunger and saving the environment through the reduction of food waste.

Today, Feeding San Diego is releasing a new video that captures the devastating impact of hunger on one out of eight San Diegans and one out of six children. Hard working families share the consequences hunger has on their lives and the lives of their kids. Educators and other community leaders share the impact Feeding San Diego programs have on the people they serve.

“I skip meals all the time,” says Chelsea, wife of a deployed Marine and mother of a toddler. “Sometimes I have to make a decision between me eating lunch and my daughter eating lunch — that’s just the reality of it. I can skip a meal a day for her.”

Another parent said, “When you have another person depending on you to live, it’s a whole other ballgame.” She said parents will do whatever it takes to make sure their kids don’t ever go to sleep hungry.

“I remember our first meeting with Feeding San Diego,” says Pamela Luster, president of San Diego Mesa College in the video. “It was very clear that the mantra of Feeding San Diego is: we don’t have a food problem, we have a food distribution problem.”

“Feeding San Diego is not a food bank,” says Vince Hall, CEO of the organization. “We are a food distributor, a food rescuer. Feeding San Diego is rescuing food from 204 Starbucks stores, 240 grocery stores across the county, every night of the year,” continued Hall, “and very quickly, through our robust decentralized food rescue and distribution system, we get that food out to families in need.”

Feeding San Diego distributed 26 million meals last year, serving 63,000 San Diegans every week.

By rescuing food before it reaches the waste stream, Feeding San Diego also is having a dramatic effect on reducing greenhouse gas emissions from San Diego landfills — preventing more than 26 million pounds from being wasted last year alone.

If you would like to interview Feeding San Diego’s CEO, please contact Rebecca Rauber.

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