MANNA CONEJO VALLEY FOOD BANK

Manna's plans to distribute more than 300,000 pounds of food in 2023. We are working with our community to improve food distribution and food recovery. We continue to work to engage the community through outreach and education, maintain organizational and financial stability, and encourage innovation to create a stronger food insecurity safety net.

To accomplish this goal, Manna moved into a new facility. This larger facility has allowed us to receive, process, and distribute an increased amount of food.

Additionally, Manna is committed to increasing the quantity of nutritionally rich foods to enhance the health of our seniors and more vulnerable clients, through partnerships with senior programs and outreach to youth programs that focus on low-income children.

Our goal is to create vibrant partnerships to efficiently move food into the hands, and onto the tables, of vulnerable families so that they can put a hearty meal on the table instead of going without.

Manna's strategy fulfill its goal is to increase collaborations with all six cities in our service area and to successfully complete its capital campaign to boost the collection and distribution of food to those who need it most. We will do this by:

Creating & Strengthening Food Rescue Partnerships: Manna collects food via a network of retail rescue programs, farmer's markets, community gardens and home gardens, collecting an average of 10,000 pounds of food each month that would otherwise go to waste. Local food drives are conducted to collect non-perishable foods for our pantry. Manna has built cooperative relationships with local meat suppliers in order to purchase quality protein, at reduced prices, to augment what we receive from rescue programs.

Sort & Inventory Food: All food donations come to our facility and are weighed, sorted, inspected and put into inventory rotation. Our new facility allows us to maximize the efficiency of food processing and warehousing with a larger facility.

Food Distribution: Manna consistently serves more than 225 families per month, often they visit twice a month, so that total number of individuals served monthly is over 900. We currently partner with local senior programs to meet the needs of home bound seniors through a mobile food distribution program. We also partner with a local veterans agency to coordinate their visits to our pantry. As needed we also work with local medical and homeless outreach programs to provide food, thereby serving more food to more people in need in our community. An ongoing partnership with a local foster families and foster youth nonprofit allows us to stock their small food pantry and distribute 15-20 prepacked bags of food to families in need.

Our new facility that we are still raising fund for has allowed us to:

Increase the quantity of food that we are able to store and distribute (eg, we can now purchase 1000lbs of chicken at a time instead of 200lbs, providing us with a greater discounted price)

•Reduce stress and support client dignity with shorter wait times in an environment that is sensitive to their emotional as well as basic needs.

•Reach out to those who are unable to access the food pantry. We have increased the number of our volunteers that provide food delivery to those homebound seniors who cannot come to the pantry.

•Attract more volunteers and partners like philanthropic groups and retailers who have food donations programs. We have already added one additional grocery store and are working on the second.

Operating since 1971, Manna has become the Conejo Valley's oldest and most respected hunger relief organization. We have built a strong relationship with community partners, businesses and corporations, schools, service and faith-based organizations, and volunteers, who donate food, work the pantry, sort and organize food, and pick-up rescued food six-days a week.

Through community partnerships, 97% of all distributed food is donated or rescued by the community, with protein being the only purchased item. Overhead costs run 7% of budget so that more money goes directly to programs and services, thereby helping more people in need more often.

Manna is unique in the realm food panties. We do not just distribute food to families on scheduled pantry days, but we actively solicit, pick-up, process and inventory thousands of pounds of food each week, making us a hybrid between a food bank and a food pantry. For more than five decades our community has wholeheartedly supported this model, which has made us the largest pantry in the area. At the completion of our capital campaign we will have a larger pantry, receiving and processing area, and more warehouse space, firmly positioning ourselves to serve the community for the next 50 years.

In 2022, we added 246 new client families, so our work in outreach and education is paying off as we are reaching. more people in need of food. We also increased the amount of perishable food rescued by establishing a new relationship with a local grocery store. With our larger facility, we continue to talk with local nonprofits as well as city officials to determine how we can best support our community in the food recovery and food distribution areas.

The focus of our expansion will continue to be acquiring foods rich in nutrition, fresh produce and quality dairy and meat items. The role Manna can play in improving health through better nutrition is becoming more and more important as our community ages. We have the ability to have a positive impact on people's lives through senior programs, medical and dental outreach programs, and quality of life programs.