Second Harvest’s Mobile School Pantry program hits a decade of serving families
A decade is a long time, but that’s how long Huntington Beach resident Rebeca Isidoro has been able to count on the Second Harvest Food Bank Mobile School Pantry program as a resource for her family.
Isidoro, who is Mexican American, lives in the predominantly Latino working class community of Oak View. She and more than 100 other families showed up for the monthly appearance of the Mobile School Pantry at Oak View Elementary School on Wednesday.
Isidoro has a son in preschool and a daughter in kindergarten at Oak View, but those are just two of her five children at home. She also has two kids in middle school, one in college and one enlisted in the U.S. Army.
The Mobile School Pantry has been an invaluable resource as her young ones grew, she said, providing staples like milk and eggs along with fresh produce.
“It’s a blessing to have this program here at school,” Isidoro said in Spanish, translated by Oak View Principal Araceli Osborn. “It’s amazing that Second Harvest Food Bank facilitates this. It really helps my family. Not just my family, but the other families here in Oak View. With the economy and everything, this supplements our food needs.”
The Mobile School Pantry program has exploded over the past decade while distributing a total of 22.6 million pounds of food.
Oak View Elementary, in the Ocean View School District, was one of 12 original sites in 2014. Today, the program has 74 Mobile School Pantries, Second Harvest chief executive Claudia Bonilla Keller said.
“Coming out of the pandemic, this is not only necessary, this is critical for families,” Bonilla Keller said. “We’re dealing with inflation, we’re dealing with a higher cost of living, and this community needs help. We can’t think of a better partner than schools. Not only are we reaching children, we’re reaching their families and some of the younger children who aren’t in the school system yet.”
Visitors to the Oak View pantry find a wide assortment of chilies and jalapeños. Bonilla Keller said Second Harvest tries to cater to the food preferences of a particular community as much as it can.
Ocean View School District Board of Trustees Clerk Gina Clayton-Tarvin said she appreciates that attention to the community’s customs, as well as the fact that the pantry’s fruits and vegetables are organic.
She said about 59% of the district’s students qualify as socioeconomically disadvantaged. At Oak View Elementary, that number leaps to 99.4%.
“Just because you’re not rich doesn’t mean you can’t eat well,” Clayton-Tarvin said. “Our community here is used to having fresh food in Mexico, and you saw Vietnamese people here as well. A lot of the food here in the United States is foreign to them, actually, because it’s so processed. This food is helping to serve the need of people who are food insecure, but also it’s truly nutritional for them.
“I think that is really important. Here at the school district, we have this partnership with this organization that’s really looking out for our communities. Not just to combat food insecurity, but also to combat having unhealthy foods in our community.”
Jadira Lopez, the community liaison for Oak View Elementary, also serves as Mobile School Pantry coordinator at the site.
Lopez said in her time with the mobile pantry it has extended into the summer months so students and families can continue receiving fresh food while school is out.
Part of her role is also explaining to families any new food items that are being distributed. On Wednesday, that was the tropical fruit rambutan,which is native to southeast Asia.
Bonilla Keller said some of the Mobile School Pantries serve the community twice monthly Seven schools in the county have permanent school pantries, as well.
Food needs remain a struggle for many families, who first have to worry about paying rent.
Bonilla Keller noted that 43% of households in the county are shelter burdened, paying more than they should for rent or their mortgage. According to a 2023 California Housing Partnership report, renters in Orange County need to earn $51.39 an hour — 3.3 times the state minimum wage — in order to afford the average monthly rent of $2,672.
“It erodes their food budget,” Bonilla Keller said. “In term of our pantry coverage in Orange County, there’s not an overabundance of food distribution points in Huntington Beach. People think that Huntington Beach is fine, nobody’s hungry, nobody’s food insecure. [But] every city in Orange County has a food insecure population.”
Data from Feeding America showed that in 2022, about 84,700 children in the county — one in eight — suffered from food insecurity.
Dareen Khatib is the administrator of health and wellness for the Orange County Department of Education.
“I’m constantly looking for resources to bring to them, to connect them to community partners,” said Khatib, who is also a Second Harvest board member. “To be honest with you, [the Second Harvest Mobile School Pantry] really wasn’t a hard sell at all. A lot of administrators at the district and school level, they recognize that we have to serve the whole child. If we really want to improve academic achievement, we cannot stop at just instruction in the classroom.”
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