The Giving Garden® Loyalty Program

The Giving Garden® Podcast Episode 2

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Full transcript of Episode 2

Martina Halloran: Welcome to The Giving Garden Podcast where we explore how small acts of giving can blossom into lasting change. I'm your host, Martina Halloran, founder of The Giving Garden and CEO of Dr. Hauschka Skin Care USA. In each episode, we highlight the power of giving, whether it's time, kindness, or resources, and how these acts can transform both lives and whole communities. Join me as we explore the ripple effect of giving and its lasting impact.

In today's episode, I'm excited to share my conversation with one of the partners of The Giving Garden loyalty program, Alameda County Community Food Bank, and their Director of community engagement and marketing, Michael Altfest. Michael's leadership has been instrumental in amplifying the food bank's mission to end hunger in Alameda County. Through innovative partnerships, impactful advocacy, and a steadfast commitment to serving others, he's helped build a stronger, more nourished community where no one has to worry about their next meal. The Alameda County Community Food Bank is no stranger to impactful work. They collaborate with over 400 agencies, and over 50% of the food distributed by ACCFB consists of fresh produce sourced from California farms.

This focus on fresh fruits and vegetables aligns with promoting healthy eating habits and supports local agriculture. The organization goes beyond food distribution to tackle the root causes of hunger. Michael's role is pivotal in driving this mission forward, from fostering community engagement to spearheading public awareness campaigns and advocacy efforts. Today, we'll dive into Michael's journey, the inspiring work of ACCFB, and how we can all contribute to a world where everyone thrives. Michael, welcome to the Giving Gardening podcast.

Michael Altfest: Thank you so much for having me. I am really honored to be here.

Martina Halloran: Well, first and foremost, I want to thank you. I want to thank you for the work that not only yourself, but your organization does because it's important, it's powerful, and it's meaningful. But before we dive into what the Alameda County Community Food Bank is all about, I'd like to hear a little bit more about you and what was the impetus or the inflection point in your life, in your professional journey that led you to do advocacy work within food insecurity and hunger awareness? I would love to hear a little bit about it, and I know that our audience would love to as well.

Michael Altfest: Well, my journey starts all the way back to childhood. You know, I am the grandson of civil servants, World War II vets. My grandfather was a rescue diver in the Navy. My grandmother was one of the original WAVES, the women accepted for volunteer emergency service, I grew up in San Diego, so I was always exposed to, you know, all of the Navy presence down there. So I kind of always had this calling to serve, just based off of just where I grew up and my family. The other side of my family, they are refugees from Eastern Europe. They escaped pogroms from in Poland after World War I. And just kind of that lived experience has always sat with me.

I kinda took a, you know, a, you know, a roundabout route to getting into actual public service. Ended up, you know, my my career path took me, through, you know, a potential career in the music industry and into sports marketing and into kind of traditional public relations. And through all of that was, you know, that underlying theme was really about putting things out there and getting people to sort of react and engage in it. So I really like doing that work. And then one day, I found myself, accidentally doing crisis communications.

And it just turned out I was good at that and just sort of stumbled into it. One thing led to another, and there's a a fun story there where I was doing work for one of our local animal welfare organizations. And this story happened where a cat had been actually, kidnapped from a shelter, and it had somehow been found across the country in New York City, I believe. And they orchestrated the return of this cat with one of our local, airlines here. You know?

So it was one of those stories where, oh, we found this we found the the the kidnapped kitten and oh, it was a partially blind kitten, by the way. And this airline is gonna jump in, and they're gonna help bring the bring the kitten back to San Francisco.

Martina Halloran: Sounds like a movie.

Michael Altfest: It it it should be a movie. The the cat's name, by the way, is Jack Daniels. So, and, you know, when this originally was presented to me, it just happened to be that I was doing work for this animal welfare organization. And when this originally came my way, I kinda turned my nose up at it. I was like, well, what's, you know, what's the value in this story?

And because I was doing crisis work and reputation work, and I was doing, you know, these these very high level things. And this just seemed at first glance, I was like, well, this seems a little, you know, superfluous. And then I saw the result of what had happened. When all of these news cameras showed up at the airport and this ended up on the news and just seeing how powerful the story itself was and the partnership working with this airline and everything and just how much that inspired people to pay attention to an organization like an annual welfare organization and to jump in and want to support it. That was that moment in my life where I was like, wow, there's something here that, you know, I can see my sort of different parts of my life converging.

I had I was doing a little bit of other work for some other nonprofits, not in any kind of, like, social service sector, but that was the moment where I just started to look around. I was like, I there's something more I can do with my life. This is fifteen years ago now, but I started to look around, and there was a position open at our food bank, and it was just a communications position. It was just doing what I did. But I started to look into this organization and was really impressed and pretty surprised about what our food bank was all about.

It wasn't just about handing out food. There was a heavy advocacy component. The history of our nutrition work was just mind blowing. And I think just the process of me applying for the position, I learned so much more about hunger relief, which, you know, at the time was very kind of charity model based. And I didn't realize how just deeper that work was.

And I was immediately I just immediately fell in love with the organization. Thankfully, they fell in love with me. And I, you know

Martina Halloran: That's tough. We have

Michael Altfest: a cat

Martina Halloran: to thank for that.

Michael Altfest: Yes. We do. Thank you, Jack Daniels.

Martina Halloran: That is that is so awesome. And one of the things that when we were thinking about bringing on Alameda as a partner, you know, you said something important. The approach to people who are receiving support in sustenance and nourishment from food banks and like organizations, Alameda approached it with a level of dignity. And in my personal story, I was a kid that experienced food insecurity for, for many different times in my life and I had the benefit of the free lunch program when the free lunch program first started in schools, you know, thirty five, almost forty years ago, so I'm gonna really date myself. But I think one of the things that was so interesting to me was it was about whole health and the whole human and a level of dignity.

And there is no shame in not being able to feed yourself and or your family. And Alameda seemed to approach it from a whole human perspective. And I found that so inspiring and in many ways comforting because I think it can be very difficult for people who need support in nourishment. And that's only the that's that's the symptom, right? That's the very first thing that they need.

So I would love for you to tell us a little bit more. Alameda County Community Food Bank is doing so much. Can you tell us the bigger picture of what they're all about in the community and how the program works and how you work within that?

Michael Altfest: Yeah. Be happy to. And like you said, we do a lot. So there's there's I'm gonna kinda split this up into sort of two different parts here. There's traditional food banking, what people typically know of when they open up a newspaper and they see a story about food banking.

You know, we are pretty much a hub. You know? If you come to our facility, you're gonna see what looks pretty familiar because it's gonna look almost like a Costco. We've got stacks and stacks and stacks and giant coolers and everything, and there's a, you know, a million to 2,000,000 pounds of food just sitting in our facility. It's a 18,000 square feet.

I mean, you could fit a couple football fields in this facility. And through that facility, every week, about a million pounds of food is gonna flow in and out of there. As you noted, we've got close to 400 partners. So those partners are typically what people may call food pantries or soup kitchens. You know, modern term for that might be like a meal program.

And then there's a lot of other programs that may be kind of on smaller scale. So a school, a senior shelter, a childcare facility, a hospital, other places where people may be getting food assistance. And those are the partner agencies that we're working with. We're procuring the food for them. They're getting the food.

They might either pick it up from us or we may deliver it. So it's it's really this flow of of food. You also pointed out about half of what we provide. It's actually no more than half of what we provide is farm fresh produce. You know?

So it's we're talking about 50 million meals worth of food going in and out of that facility every year. About 25 million pounds of that is farm fresh produce. We do have a heavy focus on the most nutritious food possible, us being in Alameda County. So Alameda County is the home of Oakland and Berkeley.

Martina Halloran: It's in

Michael Altfest: the Bay Area. It is an extremely diverse area. So a big focus of ours also is culturally relevant food. So it's a lot of work just to kinda keep that core food banking work, you know, moving. The other side of that is sort of the the upstream work, so to speak.

So you've noted that we've been doing advocacy. So, like, really, like, policy change work for more than twenty years. We've got, I have to imagine, one of, if not the largest, kind of most involved policy change and advocacy teams in the entire Feeding America network. So we're working three hundred sixty five days with all levels of government, local, county, state, federal, to lobby for, to create, to protect policies that help people and help communities that are facing poverty or food insecurity. We also have California's first and largest CalFresh outreach department.

CalFresh is the California name for what people may commonly call the federal food stamp program. Yes. That is something that, in fact, our chief impact officer, she created that program twenty one years ago now, maybe twenty two years ago. And that is a very close partnership for outreach and enrollment for families who will qualify for for CalFresh assistance. A lot of nutrition programs, you know, a lot of work that is going around and kind of both improving the way that we do the work and also hopefully shortening the line.

Ideally, we'd like to go out of business one day. Yeah. So while we're serving that line of people getting food, we're also trying to shorten that line.

Martina Halloran: When you think about the diverse population that you serve, over indexing in things such as high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes, and that really comes from nutrition. It's not because people are not trying to live a better life, it's really access. And when I think about the tremendous access you're creating, we often don't realize access is not just financial, it's geographic. So the fact that you're working with all of these networks and and meeting people where they are, whether it's daycare centers, schools, hospitals, you name so many different locales that you actually are supporting because communities are accessing food support in so many different places. There's all of these layers, which then means there's all of these entry points for other people to join the effort and to give their time or resource or mind share to really help.

Because, ultimately, that's the goal that creating self reliant humans and self reliant communities through food access is really ultimately the goal.

Michael Altfest: You use that word access, and I think that's possibly the most important word that we could discuss today. There is more than enough food in the world and in this country for people to be nourished. That is just a pure fact. Where the problem lies is in access to that, and that can mean a number of things. And this is really where we start to look at food as a justice issue.

It has long been looked at as a charity. This work that we've done and our organization is currently right in the midst of our own evolution, moving away from a charity model or a purely charity charity model and evolving into justice. Most people, myself included, until I got into this work, probably take for granted just how simple getting food might be. If you are employed and you live within, you know, driving distance of a grocery store, I myself can leave my home and I can walk to our local grocery store. It takes me about two minutes.

Mhmm. I can go and pretty much buy whatever I want. I don't put much thought into it. You know, granted food prices have gone up in the last couple years and everything. And, like, that's, you know, that's an issue that we're all facing.

But you imagine that just being so pronounced if you are

Martina Halloran: in such

Michael Altfest: a tight budget. Making sure that people have convenient access to healthy food is at the core of this. Pardon the pun because I just said core. But if you go and compare it with a bag of apples is at a grocery store to what a cost of a Happy Meal is at a fast food restaurant or something like that, you're going to see probably similar prices. Right?

And Right. You know, it is very easy to say, I got a limited budget. I need to make sure that my child has nourishment to get through this day to get to school.

Martina Halloran: Mhmm.

Michael Altfest: And your most accessible options are the least healthy. So that is really what we're about. Right? It was twenty two years ago when our former executive director looked at our warehouse and saw that our food bank was still distributing soda as most food banks, if not all food banks were at the time. And she said, no.

We can't do this. This is not helping the community. And said, we're getting rid of that. And our board of directors, they got behind her, but they had to ask that question. Like, well, what are you gonna you know, how are you gonna replace that?

What are you gonna do? Because food banks at the time were pretty much judged on the amount of pounds that they put out. And she said, well, we'll do it with farm fresh produce. That was a million pounds. And at the time, it was a very, like, groundbreaking

Martina Halloran: My kind of doubt.

Michael Altfest: Thing. Yeah. So you know? And at the time, it was it was maybe a bit of a challenge, and it was it was boundary pushing. It was innovative and everything.

It's very, very discord of food banking now. Like, we made a big change, and we said, look. We need to do this. And that has driven so much of the work that we've done. You brought up school meals.

I think that is a critical piece of this too. School meals are now in the California state budget. It is they're universal for California public schools. So any child who goes to a California public school can get a free school meal. It is impossible to overstate just how critical that is both just because of the access.

Right? So a child who's going to school can get a healthy meal. And another critical point there too is the stigma of that. Hunger relief has lot.

Martina Halloran: Yeah.

Michael Altfest: Like, long been kind of an othering. Like, oh, there's a line. Or I remember when I was in school,

Martina Halloran: it was a weird There was a different color lunch ticket. I had a different color lunch ticket. Yeah. And so everybody knew, And you would try and, like, hide it in your pocket because there was such shame and stigma associated with getting a free lunch.

Michael Altfest: Any child in that line, it's they're all getting it. That stigma is gone. You know, and it's I I know it's encouraging to me. It's heartwarming to me. Some days that my own son he's like, can I have school lunch today?

I was like, yes. Absolutely. You're like, I would. You know? And just knowing that, like, he he can take advantage of that.

That lifts a burden on me too.

Martina Halloran: I think it's really important when kids go to school. Everybody has the same footing to have the opportunity to really learn and take in the information. And they're not there sitting next to their friend who has this really robust lunch, and they don't have a lunch, or they have minimal. And I think that when you come back to the conversation that we were having earlier about the justice piece of it, I believe access to fresh fruits, vegetables, good, healthy nutrition is a fundamental human right.

Michael Altfest: Yes.

Martina Halloran: And people can argue with me, and I think that is an opinion that they will not change because when you talk about the dignity of of human existence, to be able to feed and house and clothe yourself are ways people move through life with dignity. And then there's this whole cycle of events, whether you're in a community that is really considered a food desert, and then you're shopping at a bodega or a convenience store, or to your point, getting a fast food meal because you have a limited budget. It's really a recipe for disaster for overall health. When you think about the long term implications of children at the very onset of really getting into their critical formative years, not having access on a regular basis to healthy food sources is really incredible when you think of the country that we live in. And one of the things that is, I think, is really powerful is the sheer numbers.

I think it's important for our audience to understand the numbers, the number of people that you support because I think people will be a little surprised at how big the need is.

Michael Altfest: Yes. The need is quite large and particularly in in our area. You know, the Bay Area is a very, very expensive place to live. The cost of living, it's, practically prohibitive for, you know, most people unless they're extremely wealthy. Our area, we're estimating between about one in four and one in five.

So twenty to twenty five percent of people in Alameda County do experience some level of food insecurity that ranges. So there's people who will depend on us for essentially their entire nutrition, you know, three hundred and sixty five days a year. That might be somebody, as an example, like a senior who's living on a fixed fixed income. Most of that income is going to their housing and medical and everything. So they can turn to us, and we can make sure that that piece is taken care of.

On the other side of it and, you know, we've seen a shift in the last, say, five years, particularly over the course of the pandemic, is, you know, somebody who would never identify as food insecure. They maybe have a moderate income or in what would in most places, maybe even considered a decent income. But here in the Bay Area,

Martina Halloran: you you

Michael Altfest: know, rent eats first. You gotta keep the lights on. You gotta put food. You you gotta put gas in your car. You gotta have the utilities and everything.

And then maybe, you know, you get paid on Friday, but it's Wednesday and you open up the fridge and there's not a lot in there. So maybe you wait a few days to go grocery shopping. You have an unhealthy meal. You know, you pop a, you know, microwave burrito in the in the fridge or in the in the microwave or something like that. You kinda making those choices that maybe you're not identifying this food insecurity, but, like, those are parts of food insecurity.

Right? Like, I can't consistently afford healthy food. So before the pandemic, before people really, really, really knew just sort of the impact of food banks, you know, that person maybe would not have reached out. And because of the pandemic, as odd as it is to say there might be a silver lining there, a lot more people realize that they have this resource. So you don't have to make that decision of, can I go to the grocery store, or can I access healthy food, or do I have to pay my PG and E bill to keep the lights on?

Martina Halloran: Right.

Michael Altfest: You know, you can do both now because you pay the bill and then there's a there's a source of of healthy food. In our instance, pretty much anywhere in our county, which is a fairly large county, you can access food probably within about a mile of your home. And that would be even in what would you know, people would consider as some of the more wealthier parts of the county, making sure that people have that access. And, you know, what we say here, right place, right food, right time, like, that is a core piece of what makes this a justice issue. You shouldn't have to take a bus and then transfer to another bus to go to the grocery store and spend your last $12 on a microwave pizza.

Martina Halloran: People through the pandemic understood that the resource was there, but I also think that the audience that does not need the service and the support became aware. I don't think people really recognized the depths. I think there's a mentality at times where it's those people. You know, that it's it's they're not realizing they're going to work with people that cannot feed their families. They are riding the bus or they are passing people that from their perspective, that person's got it all together, and they are not recognizing how profound the issue is in The United States.

Michael Altfest: Hunger is among the most just, you know, critical hidden problems. Right? And your point is is spot on. We all know somebody right now who is experiencing food insecurity, and we probably don't know it. We don't know what people are going through.

You can be quick to judge. I think, you know, we all kind of do it, but that person's driving a nice car or they live in my neighborhood, and we may not know what else is going on. They may have crippling medical debt as an example.

Martina Halloran: Right.

Michael Altfest: That is a part of our country that is, you know, that is that needs some fixing itself. And if people are really underwater or they're experiencing something that we don't know, the last thing people are gonna do is raise their hand and say, hey, guess what? You know? I don't have enough money for food. Unfortunately, and this is something that we've experienced a lot, you know, I've seen it myself.

Food insecurity carries still to this day such a huge stigma, and people are often really scared and embarrassed. And Yeah. The, you know, the saddest part about this, the hardest part is when people are really apologetic when they reach out. People think that they're imposing. So, you know, people will spend they will do everything.

They will sell their furniture before they call their our emergency food helpline because of that stigma. And it's just it's almost hard to put words to what happens to sort of that change when somebody they call our emergency food helpline and they say, you know what? Like, I I really feel like I should have called it weeks ago. And they go from that level of just fear, embarrassment, everything. And then our coworkers, my coworkers, or the volunteers who work on our emergency

Martina Halloran: food

Michael Altfest: helpline, they are assuring and they you know, I've seen it. I I've seen it myself watching a volunteer on the phone walking somebody through the steps. Alright. Go to this corner. Get on this bus.

I'm gonna stay on the phone with you until you get there. And by the time they get there, that, that food pantry, they knew that they were coming. They were waiting for them. Here's this bag of food, and, you know, and it's great food. It will be fresh produce.

It could be eggs. It could be chicken. It'll be peanut butter. It's high quality food. And the relief that

Martina Halloran: I was just gonna say that that relief must be so overwhelming, and there is definitely this stigma that still follows. I mean, fast forward forty years. I don't think it was but two years ago that people really knew my story. And it it makes people uncomfortable. Part of the goal in in in me having a conversation like this with you is to really normalize the conversation.

Because to your point, asking for that type of help often comes with judgment that you've done something wrong or your life has gone awry in a way that you could have prevented, and that's not true. It simply isn't true. And from a society perspective, we need to have a level of care for people. I am so hopeful when I have conversations like this and and listen, really listen and understand the level that you're working at and all of the layers that are creating this wraparound of community support. I can imagine that you must have an army of people, you know, or not.

The idea of volunteering is very, very prevalent for people. But I think a lot of times people don't understand, like, how do I get involved or how do I volunteer? So I have a couple of questions. How many volunteers make your whole organization go every day? And then is there a program?

Are you is there an outreach program to get more people to volunteer? And is it relatively easy for somebody to step in and start training or working with you to be a volunteer?

Michael Altfest: We cannot do the work we do without volunteers. That is just a pure simple fact. So I I threw a lot of numbers out earlier. So, you know, imagine about 60,000,000 pounds of food flowing through our facility. That food is going to 360 some odd partner agencies.

We've got a fleet of 12 or so trucks that are going in and out of the facility. I mean, it is a massive logistics operation. And we're doing that with a 50 staff, and that's every level of staff. I mean, we're talking security guards, fundraisers, nutrition, you know, nutrition education, advocacy, and everything. And the operations part of it is just a small part.

We, in this last year, welcomed 14,000 volunteers Wow. For our work. Yes. Oh,

Martina Halloran: that's that's insane. Wow. Bravo.

Michael Altfest: Yeah. We're so grateful to have a community that jumps in and is just so willing to help. We have a very compassionate community. You know, it's it's great living in a place like Alameda County where people kinda live here because they are altruistic in many cases. So being civically minded and everything, we benefit from that.

But I see it all across the country. People really wanna jump in and help with food banks. So, you know, on a given day, we do two shifts on most days. We're open five or six days a week depending on the weekend, And we'll have anywhere between 50 and a hundred people. We just did a a massive day of service on Martin Luther King Junior Day.

We had almost 350 volunteers come in that day. It was our largest volunteer day that we've ever had in forty years as a food bank.

Martina Halloran: It was

Michael Altfest: I'm I'm getting goosebumps just

Martina Halloran: thinking

Michael Altfest: about the vibe in there. So, yeah, volunteering is super easy, and it's really, really impactful. And most importantly, it's so fun. Most of those 14,000 are gonna come in for one day. Every year.

You know, it's often they'll come in with their companies, their schools. In three hours, you will be part of an effort that will prepare a roughly 20 thousand pounds worth of food. So we're getting food directly from farms or we're getting food drive food. That's coming in bulk. So you gotta imagine a warehouse just full of bulk food items, and volunteers are taking that and say you're you're standing over a bin of apples, and you're turning into a bag of apples just like you would get at a grocery store, for example.

Or we're going through our food drive collections, and we're sorting out foods. And and the canned vegetables are going over here. The juice is going over here and building boxes. So there's a lot of work that gets done. And in, you know, three hours, you're having a huge impact.

You know, we try to remind every single volunteer that comes through that that apple that they are holding in that moment is going to be in somebody's refrigerator within a day or two. That's gonna end up, you know, going through those partner agencies is gonna be distributed. And a child, a senior, a family, they're gonna get nourished because of that food. For people who wanna volunteer, it's simple. I mean, you could pretty much go to any food bank website.

I'm guessing any food bank website. And if you don't know your local food bank, you can go through the Feeding America website. They'll help you locate your local food bank, you know, and we are all largely volunteer driven. So it's usually it's pretty easy. You know, there's gonna be a volunteer button right on the right on our website, which is accfb.org.

You can sign up as an individual. You can sign up as a group. You know? And we have a a number of volunteers who come regularly. So we've got we've got volunteers who have created relationships and friendships and friend groups and, like, just lifelong connections because they're there.

Martina Halloran: It sounds like you have such a committed group of volunteers, but a committed community. I mean, community is what is what really makes things happen. And when I think about that, you know, how do you how do you raise awareness outside of your community? Because I think it's it is a little bit about that snowball effect. How do we keep having the conversations and build awareness so there's a broader audience of support, if you will?

Michael Altfest: Any means that we can get the word out, we do. We'll be in the news a lot. You know, if there's issues that are out there, you know, we we will we'll do the media pitch, and we will get the news out about, our work. But it kind of ultimately just just boils down to partnerships. You know?

We don't do this work in isolation by any means. So we've got like minded organizations who may be, in the housing space or other justice spaces or anti racist spaces or, you know, you can look at government partnerships. We've got our our tentacles, so to speak, sort of in every corner of our community.

Martina Halloran: We keep saying partnerships, but what do some of them look like? I know you have so many of them, and I think our audience would love to understand some of the groups that you work with.

Michael Altfest: Yeah. I mean, if you come to mind, one partnership, for example, would be with our Alameda County social services department. So we partner directly with them on that CalFresh outreach. So we we've got our staff on-site, and then there's the there's the social services staff with Alameda County.

They work very, very closely. We can, you know, submit applications directly from our food bank. So that's a perfect example of, sort of, like, a public or private partnership plays a huge role. We've got really strong relationships with, well, a lot of schools, every single university, every single college college of every size, you know, throughout Alameda County. So whether it's a community college or all the way up to, like, University of California at Berkeley.

So we have partnerships with with those. I think one of the, you know, newer partnerships that a lot of people are really interested in is with, Stephen and Ayesha Curry's Eat, Learn, Play Foundation. So those who know, Stephen Curry is

Martina Halloran: one

Michael Altfest: of the most famous NBA players, and his, his wife, Ayesha, is a very well known restaurant owner, chef cookbook author. They are, you know, among the top power couples in the entire country, and they are extraordinarily generous and wonderful people. They've got their own foundation, which is called Eat Learn Play, which as the name may suggest, is focused on on childhood literacy, activity, and nutrition. They've got the coolest old school school bus that they have transformed into. Yeah.

Martina Halloran: Very, very cool. And it looks like it's a lot of fun too.

Michael Altfest: It is really cool. And, you know, we've talked a lot about stigma. That is a big part of that. That bus shows up to a playground, a school, an event, and kids come flocking to it. You know, we could sit here and describe it and encourage people to go look at it.

The art on the bus was done by very prominent street artists here, muralist called the Illuminaries. Excuse me. That partnership so, you know, if you look at the interconnectedness of all of this, you know, children make up the biggest group that we serve, probably most food banks serve. So we take care of a lot of the hunger relief element of that, but the entire organization and, again, there's the literacy part. So that bus pulls up.

It might pull up to a playground. There's a lot of there's activity that happens with that. The children can get food, and then they're also getting age appropriate books. So that's a, you know, it's a full interconnected effort there.

Martina Halloran: How do you take that idea within your organization and ladder it up to the parents and the adults in terms of educational resources or programs that really help people make the best decisions that they can with the food resources that they have. Do you have programs within your wraparound services that helps people kind of navigate the world of cooking or selecting or

Michael Altfest: Yeah. Whatever. So whether it be through that partnership or other work that we're doing, we have a nutrition education team that does actually create recipes that are entirely based in the food that we provide at the food bank.

Martina Halloran: Oh, that's fantastic.

Michael Altfest: If I were to walk into my kitchen right now, I've got a giant binder of just my, like, recipes that have been handed down through generations or from food banks. I, to this day, will will actually cook in my own kitchen stuff that I've gotten from our nutrition education department because it's surprisingly easy to eat very healthy and have it taste really good. You don't have to load it with a bunch of butter and sugar and salt and everything. There's a lot of there are a lot of things that, you know, you can just get it at a food bank.

Martina Halloran: Something really important. A lot of people don't realize that there there is a simplicity to eating really healthy and well, then sometimes that simplicity can really nourish you, and I think that's an educational piece. We often say at Doctor. Hauschka, we we meet people where they're at, and it sounds like your organization is really able to meet people where they're at, not just socially, geographically, financially, but culturally as well.

And I think that's important that people feel a sense of dignity. And it sounds like your organization really tries to simplify things in the process so people aren't overwhelmed, or they don't get discouraged and then walk away. I did not know that you had an emergency hotline, and that is really incredible.

Michael Altfest: Yes. And that is really what food banks have historically been. We have been emergency response organizations. So we maybe not think of, you know, an individual experiencing food insecurity in a onetime instance as an emergency, but it very much is. You know?

But or we know we've talked about COVID. Or, here in California, we, you know, are facing a lot of fires in the South. People are facing, you know, destructive hurricanes. It's just a matter of time here in California before we have another major earthquake. And these are those instances whether they're happening in a situational basis or a systemic basis, and it largely is systemic, but they are emergency situations.

You know, I am going through life, and I have a situation right now where I'm, I'm unable to do something that is a basic need. And to your point, a basic right, that's where we jump in. So people are when they're calling our emergency food helpline, it usually means I need groceries right now. I need a hot meal right now. And that's what we are making sure that we're doing in that moment.

And then on the other side, we are making sure that we're kinda building systems or, you know, tearing down systems and rebuilding those systems so that people do not need to call us in the

Martina Halloran: In an emergency situation. Yeah.

Michael Altfest: Yeah. We're trying to avoid those emergency situations to begin with. Now we we'll never get rid of those. Right? Emergencies are always going to exist.

But when we're talking about hunger, we are talking about it largely as systemic as a systemic issue.

Martina Halloran: When you think about that as a systemic issue, was there anything specifically that you and your organization are working on now from an advocacy perspective? I know that you're doing a lot of government work, but what's kind of the in the immediate horizon in terms of advocacy right now?

Michael Altfest: Yeah. So I I'm gonna break this down a little bit and kinda helps to give the context. Historically, our advocacy and policy change work was rooted largely in nutrition benefits. And so, you know, so CalFresh, you know, SNAP, known as the federal food food stamp program, that is within a giant piece of legislation, federal legislation called the farm bill. So a lot of people kinda hear the farm bill.

I don't blame anybody if they kinda just gloss over that and they don't think too much about it. But it is a massive, massive piece of legislation that gets reauthorized every handful of years at the US government level. Yes. It pays for some farm subsidies and so forth, but also built within that is the federal funding for the fixed debt program. So, you know, it may be something like that that we've historically been involved in, and we are starting to, you know, particularly in the last couple years, starting to sort of spread out.

There may be things that are a little bit more tangentially related to hunger that you may see us get involved in, say, for instance, lobbying to increase minimum wage. Right? Or you know? So that that one's obvious. Right?

More money in people's pockets means they can afford more food. We may also get involved on tax issues because, you know, one of the problems that we face here in California, there's will. I think there's plenty of political will to solve a lot of these problems. What California does not have is enough money to fund these programs. So just I mean, the fact that we got, universal school meals funded in the California state budget is nearly miraculous because California is so hamstrung by our own tax structure.

So people may scratch their heads like, why is the food bank advocating for these tax policy changes? It's because the state can't do anything if it doesn't have revenue. But then you'll start to look at larger, more kind of, systemic things. Like, one thing that we've been working on for the last couple years is trying to lower the barrier, expand nutrition access to people regardless of their immigration status. This is when we're starting to get into really like anti racist work and everything.

There is no reason why somebody shouldn't be able to access food, particularly their immigration status regardless of the age or those sorts of things. So we'll start to do that. We'll probably begin working a lot more on on things that do address the systemic causes of hunger. And I know, you know, it's it's often a shock to the system when people hear this for the first time. But hunger and poverty really are race issues.

In our county alone, seven out of ten people who are facing poverty are people of color. That did not happen by accident. It did not happen overnight. It is not coincidental. It goes back years and years, I mean, to the founding of this country that this is a race issue.

And when we say the word racism, we're not, you know, talking necessarily about that traditional sort of like, hey, there's a white supremacist who's hates people of color. It's, you know, it's much deeper than this. There is policies that have been, you know, rooted into this into the structure of this country. You know, we're talking redlining and all of those sorts of things that have caused this problem and worsened it and made it nearly impossible for historically marginalized communities to to overcome. The the poverty, we know is a very generational issue.

There's, you know, the generation wealth gap is, you know, it's comically large.

Martina Halloran: Mike, is this where we say drop the mic? Because that I mean, there's there's so many realities that are involved with this. And to your point, you know, people can gloss over things when they're not inherent issues, and I think it's so layered. The impetus, you know, for me for the conversation today is is twofold. One, giving people some perspective as to how your organization works and how they might seek to volunteer support, give to an organization that's a little bit more localized for themselves.

And then to really understand an organization such as yours is, how do we better understand how do we do the most good for a food bank? And, like, what are your immediate needs?

Michael Altfest: If this if somebody's just first wanting to engage in the food bank, I would tell them to do the thing that they are most they would find most meaningful in that moment. Start there. Do what's within your means. In my ideal world, every single person in our community, they would be volunteering. They would be donating money.

They would be donating food. They would be advocating. They would be educating themselves and becoming anti racist and understanding the root causes of this. I realize that is not a a reasonable request for this.

A tall order. So but, you know, sometimes people their their best way in is to put a jar of peanut butter in a food drive barrel. Sometimes people want to come in and get their hands on that food and pack something. You know, it's a great team building experience to volunteer. Sometimes people, they really wanna help, and the best thing that they can do is write a check.

If somebody if I had to say, you know, the the number one most important thing, it is financial donations. One thing that, you know, a place where food banks have evolved and changed a lot in the last decade is where we source our food. We don't actually get a lot of donated food anymore, at least relative to the size of the organization that we have become. We still do get plenty of it, but it's not the primary source. The primary way we get food is we purchase it.

Our food bank, either just in the pure bulk that we get or when we combine our efforts with all of the food banks in our region or statewide, are able to get massive amount of food for pennies on the dollar.

Martina Halloran: So you go to the store. Makes sense. Yeah.

Michael Altfest: You go to the store, and and you are gonna buy a bag of apples for $510. Right? I we can get a pound of apples for about 12¢. You know? Like and that's just the, you know, that's just the bat fee.

So every dollar that you donate to a food bank like ours

Martina Halloran: Yeah.

Michael Altfest: We'll distribute roughly, like, two meals worth of food. So it's a couple pounds worth of food. So that is a great place to start. My hope, and I think our hope, is that somebody takes that first step and understands their impact and wants to do more. If you donate to our food bank, one of the first things that we're gonna say to you is, hey, will you come in and volunteer?

Like, we want people to see the impact of their food. If they're if they're volunteering, you know, we'll do this particularly during times where we've got important legislative asks. So our our volunteers will be on-site. And if we need the governor to sign a budget, sign a bill or something like that, we will stop everybody in the middle of the shift. We'll say, hey.

Guess what, everybody? There is a bill sitting on governor Newsom's desk right now that it's imperative for it to pass. It will make a huge impact on hunger, in our community. Will you please scan this QR code and send a note to the governor saying, I support this. Will you please sign it?

You know? And that's where I come in. That's where that's where my work really is is trying to build the engagement. I've never seen a single instance where somebody has come and engaged with our work and said, no. This isn't for me.

They come and they engage with this work, and they see, wow. I'm making an enormous impact. And when people really start to see, it's there's that saying the rising tide lifts all boats. It's, you know, we've we've often looked at hunger relief as sort of this this one way channel. I'm gonna give something and it's gonna help a person.

And it's much, much greater than that. People you know, when you are helping lift up this community, it's helping all of us. So

Martina Halloran: rounded in reciprocity. Giving is very cyclical, and it's and it there's a reciprocal aspect to it. You sound so hopeful, Bill, that I I appreciate that because with with the conversation we've just had, giving is at the core of of this podcast. And we've talked about this massive need to give, if you will, whether it's, you know, your time or your resources financially, physically with food. But you sound so hopeful still, and that inspires me that given what you're working towards and giving what you see every single day and the sheer number of people that you're supporting on a daily basis can feel daunting, can feel discouraging.

But you sound so hopeful. So I'm gonna ask you, are you hopeful?

Michael Altfest: I'm very hopeful. You know, our we've got five values at our food bank. The last one is hope. We're talking belonging, accountability, community, transparency, hope. And we can't lose hope.

It is. I mean, this problem has gotten worse in the last couple years. It has not really gotten better since COVID, where we saw most food banks our size pretty much double in size and scope, and then we see the need. And, you know, the political climate for as long as I've been doing this has been very volatile. You know, there's so much that we cannot control as an organization, but I see those 14,000 volunteers come in.

I see all of my coworkers who are just amazing human beings, who are experts in what they do. And we say this a lot, and, you know, if if you can end hunger anywhere, we believe it's it's in Alameda County. We have the resources. We have the the right political will. We have a community that is willing to step up and support this.

And we've done such a tremendous job of of addressing the need that has been in front of us. And I've seen in real time, you know, we talked about, say, California school meals. You know, we've seen that change happen over time that there's no reason to not be hopeful. There's no reason to not believe. It does not change the fact, like you said, it is daunting.

There's a massive, massive wall sitting in front of us. But, like, you know, we've got enough pickaxes to start chipping away at that thing. And if we can really start to put in place the things that our food bank is working on right now and really becoming a justice focused, organization, I firmly believe it's it goes beyond hope, but I firmly believe that we're gonna start to see some real real change here in the coming years. We we know people want it. We know people need it, and we know we know how to do it.

Martina Halloran: Thank you. Not only for the conversation, but the information. But, really, the work that your organization and you were doing is so massive and so important and so powerful, and that change can happen.

Michael Altfest: Yes.

Martina Halloran: I wanna make sure our audience understands how to really connect with the Alameda County Community Food Bank, and that if they're interested in connecting or supporting or helping you, where would they go to connect with you?

Michael Altfest: Best place would be our website, which is a c c f b. That is Alameda County Community Food Bank. We are part of both the California Association of Food Banks and, Feeding America, which is the, you know, the nation's network of food banks. There's 200 food banks that operate similar to ours that covers the entire country. So really do encourage people to check out their own food bank.

The the issue of hunger while it is, you know, it you're gonna find it in every single community. It may be, you know, manifesting a little bit differently or the approach to to alleviating it or alleviating aiding. Is this can we do this as an edit?

Martina Halloran: Well we'll certainly do this as an edit.

Michael Altfest: Yeah. So I would also encourage people to, you know, check out Feeding America to find their own local food bank. We are we're all local organizations. So, you know, if somebody's listening to this in any other part of the country, do please reach out and support your own local food bank. Although, you know, we we do love when people you know, it it happens occasionally.

We'll get, you know, people reaching out from across the country saying, hey. You know, I heard this or I saw this. I'm like, we wanna support you. But, you know, we do want people to support their own local food banks as well.

Martina Halloran: Fantastic. Thank you so much. Thank you for listening to the Giving Garden podcast. I hope you're leaving inspired because even the smallest act can spark positive change. If you've enjoyed today's episode, don't forget to like, subscribe, and share.

The Giving Garden Podcast is produced by Edwin Batista and edited by Steven West. A special thanks to Helen Polisi for her guidance and generosity. The Giving Garden Podcast is brought to you by Dr. Hauschka Skincare USA, pioneers in natural skin care for over 50 years and home to The Giving Garden loyalty program. Visit drhauschka.com to learn more.