This initiative provides home delivery of a weekly “resilience box” of fresh, nutritious, and locally grown food to serve up to 200 families (up to 1000 adults and children) identified as most vulnerable according to R4C’s screening process and informed by their on-the-ground work with families as community health workers and doulas. These boxes contain purchased and donated produce, and protein and grains from area farmers and initiatives including Artisan Grain Collaborative’s “Neighbor Loaves Program”. In partnership with Rooted, the Badger Rock Neighborhood Center will serve as host site for aggregating food and packing the weekly boxes. Community members who have experienced job loss due to the pandemic are paid to deliver the boxes to residents’ homes. Boxes contain printed information about food preparation, COVID-19, and health and support resources developed by Roots4Change to meet language and cultural communication needs.

Mariela Quesada Centeno, Roots4Change Cooperative Manager says, “Our Latino/Indigenous familiesare uniquely impacted by this crisis – they make up 40% of service workers in the county, and 94% of families with children fall below the poverty line.* Together with compounding factors, including lack of information, social isolation and fears surrounding immigration status, it makes it so that they are among the least likely to seek help from established food and support programs.”

Likewise, small farmers in our region, many of them young, female, and minority farmers, have seen their business impacted by the closure of farmers’ markets, institutions, and restaurants, and are struggling to break even.

“REAP and R4C see in this crisis an opportunity to respond in a way that benefits many.” states Helen Sarakinos, REAP Executive Director. “We are aiming to create maximum benefit for food-insecure neighbors who are the backbone of the food and service industry and for struggling farmers who serve our region.”

The initiative is launching a campaign to raise $25,000 to meet our goal to supply resilience boxes to 100 families weekly and support small family farms through July. All donations will be 100% directed toward this emergency initiative. Donations to the Farms to Families Fund / Fondo de Granjas a Familias can be made at reapfoodgroup.org