Our Programs

Our society has made significant achievements in modern medicine, technology, and space research. Despite these incredible achievements we have not been able to tackle and solve one of the biggest problems we face today, lack of easily available healthy foods. At California Food Aid we have developed, implemented and successfully applied a number of programs aimed at improving access to good nutrition.

Identifying and acknowledging the problem is an important step towards solving it.

We consider communication to be a cornerstone of our work. It is often easy to miss important information when we are bombarded with facts, problems, and events in our daily lives. We can overlook key issues.

Lack of access to healthy foods has serious negative effects on physical health, mental health, and quality of life. This is especially true in children. A child’s body is going through multiple periods of growth and development, which require the presence of proper nutrition and sufficient calories. Lack of access to proper nutrition can lead to growth failure, poor brain development, school underachievement, chronic medical conditions, and mental health illnesses. Access to proper nutrition from early childhood creates a solid foundation for a healthy future.

We strongly believe that providing children with proper nutrition is a priority for our society. No family should have to make a difficult choice between healthy food and being able to pay rent, medical bills, or any other essential activities of daily lives.

Food insecurity affects nearly two million undernourished California children. In order to dramatically reduce this number, we must understand the roots of the problem and direct our efforts effectively to eliminate them. Our great state produces about half of all fruits and vegetables in the country, yet the distribution and delivery of this fresh produce are not done in a timely manner. The more products are delivered to a distribution center, such as California Food Banks, the higher the costs of storage and transportation are. This is especially true for perishable dairy and meat products. California Food Aid is working hard to clearly identify the problem areas and find solutions that will allow us to feed more children in the State of California.

Work with children

There are multiple obstacles to providing proper and full nutrition to all children. Some parents may not be aware of what qualifies as healthy foods, others may not have the financial means to purchase healthier options. Often parents are busy working to cook at home and just pick up food on the way home from a long day at work. Our schools are also often limited by financial restraints to purchasing healthier foods. California Food Aid aims at providing educational programs to schools and families eliminating the gaps in knowledge and accessibility, creating a healthy and safe environment for children to grow and succeed. 

What are we doing:

• We conduct lectures on healthy nutrition developed by our nutritionists;
• Organize workshops on creating a healthy menu and cooking;
• We put together educational games on the subject of healthy eating;
• Create individual nutritional plans;
• Provide reliable information and consistent physical and moral support to participants in our programs.

We strive to make our activities for children interesting, exciting and interactive in order to fully engage them in this process of learning about proper nutrition and to help them form healthy and sustainable eating habits.