Exciting news!
Seven days a week White Pony Express sets out to "rescue" and "recover" food from the local abundance of fresh, nutritious goods from local supermarkets and shops like Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, Safeway, Farmer's Markets, and Starbucks and redistributes this bounty to people who need it the most.
With the rise in families living at or below the poverty line, children and their families living in Contra Costa County need access to good food more than ever before. The challenge is getting it to them week in and week out. That is why we're so pleased to announce that White Pony Express received a grant from the San Ramon Valley Kiwanis Foundation to assist with the transportation costs of getting rescued food from our Distribution Center in Pleasant Hill to some of the six schools in our growing school pantry network, that spans from the far eastern part of the county in Bay Point and Antioch to the far western parts in Richmond.
WPE has been focused on setting up 2-3x weekly deliveries of food through "School Pantry" partnerships with public schools where at least 80% of students qualify for the free or reduced lunch program and where parents struggle to keep children fed when they are not in school, including nights, weekends and holiday breaks.
White Pony Express School Pantries are school or afterschool based places where parents can pick up free food in the afternoons, gathering what they need from that week's delivery of produce, meats, bread, eggs, cheeses, and deli items and more to keep their families fed during for breakfasts and dinners and meals over the weekend.
In order to have perishable food delivered regularly and ready for pick up across the underserved areas of this very large county, we need to keep our fleet of refrigerated trucks and vans fueled and out on the roads. That takes both time and money to fuel. This grant helps us keeps those vehicles powered and and on the road delivering to our School Panties every week.
Thank you to the Kiwanis Club of San Ramon Valley, for helping us deliver - with love!
To learn more about the San Ramon Valley Kiwanis Club and the other nonprofit organizations they generously support, visit www.srvkiwanis.org and @srvkiwanis on Facebook.
To help support the work we do with your financial or other gifts of time or products, please reach out to us and let's talk about becoming friends and partners!