Feeding San Diego awards food rescue van to Life Christian Center to increase hunger relief

Published On: July 10th, 2020By Categories: Partnerships1.8 min read

Feeding San Diego awarded Life Christian Center, a community partner, a new food rescue van to enable the organization to rescue more high-quality food. 

Feeding San Diego is on a mission to connect every person facing hunger with nutritious meals by maximizing food rescue. Through a network of charitable and faith-based food rescue partners, Feeding San Diego coordinates the rescue of 13.1 million pounds of food per year from 530 locations across San Diego County per year. An additional 13.2 million pounds is rescued from outside of the county. Rescued food accounted for 97 percent of over 26 million meals delivered to San Diegans in need last year.

“With a 50% rise in hunger due to the COVID-19 crisis, Feeding San Diego is proud to help our community partners rescue more food throughout San Diego County,” said Alicia Saake, COO of Feeding San Diego. “Life Chrisitan Center is a valued community partner and doing important work to serve people facing hunger in Chula Vista.”

Through a previously announced $500,000 grant from CalRecycle, Feeding San Diego purchased four specially-equipped food rescue vans in addition to onsite cold storage equipment, for several local partners including Life Christian Center. San Diego Assemblymember Brian Maienschein authored legislation to enable this grant process through CalRecycle because food waste in landfills is one of the top sources of methane in the state. California is working to reduce statewide greenhouse gas emissions at least 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030. “Efforts such as these illustrate the multi-faceted benefits of environmental programs. On the one hand, bringing excess edible food to Californians who don’t get enough to eat keeps that food out of landfills, which reduces greenhouse gas emissions,” CalRecycle Acting Director Ken DaRosa said. “But these grants also offer the additional benefit of providing for those who are food insecure in our communities.”

In 2019, Life Christian Center rescued 148,879 pounds of food, and this year, they have rescued 117,116 pounds so far to help families during this pandemic. In partnership with Feeding San Diego, Life Christian Center hosts a weekly drive-through emergency food distribution every Saturday from 9:00 AM to 10:30 AM at 7015 Alamitos Avenue, Chula Vista CA 92154.