Get Involved - has information about a number of ways that you can learn about and join efforts to end hunger: through donations, volunteer work, advocacy, public education, or a unique community-based method of finding and linking the unique skills of local community residents (Asset-Based Community Development).

Mobilizing Resources

• Established Generous Helping, a clearinghouse program which has assisted fifteen food donors (e.g. EatYourVegetables Restaurants, Sutter Memorial and Sutter General Hospitals, Biba's Restaurant, and Bel Air Markets' Catering) to donate more than 4,000 pounds of unserved prepared food to seven
  nonprofit agencies including WEAVE, Hope House, Volunteers Of America, and Sacramento Area Emergency Housing since September 1991. This type of food would have been thrown away before the
  Generous Helping Project was implemented by the Hunger Commission. outreach to more agencies and donors is an ongoing process.
• Secured four subsidized, full-time VISTA volunteer positions from the federal government. Over the course of a three year agreement (February 1991 through approximately January 1994) with the federal ACTION Agency, these VISTA positions will represent an in-kind contribution equivalent of more than $365,000 in salaries and fringe benefits.
• Under the direct supervision of the program manager of the Hunger Commission, the VISTA volunteers have initiated Generous Helping as well as an innovative client self-sufficiency project located at three emergency food sites.
• Coordinated a food handlers' sanitation class targeted to emergency food and shelter staff people. Taught by an instructor from Cosumnes River College, the course is endorsed by the County Environmental Health Division and was offered as a first step in informing nonprofit food providers about health and sanitation codes with which the majority of these programs are currently unfamiliar. Underwriting was secured for this course from a local restaurateur.
• Secured a $5,000 grant from Pacific Bell and expanded a computerized client data base operated by the Sacramento Food Bank from seven to nine community food closet sites.
• Established an agreement with Cosumnes River College (CRC) to provide an instructor for the food services training component of the Sacramento Area community Kitchen (SACK) Project, which will utilize donated leftovers from food industries to produce meals to be distributed through existing emergency food and shelter programs. CRC is also providing the SACK kitchen site at minimal cost to the community.

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