From: Karen Clay <
Sent: Tuesday, June 14, 2022 7:02 AM
To: cityclerk@chulavista. ca.gov
Cc: Karen Clay < Manuel Medrano < mmedrano@chulavistaca. gov>; Dave Didonato < ddidonato@chulavistaca. gov>; Elizabeth Prado < Subject: Comment for June 14th City Council Meeting, Consent Calendar item 5.3, Report 22- 0124 I am having problems uploading my comments to the CV system. Please call me at your earliest convenience if you need something else from me. I will be driving and will return you call.
Please read at the meeting tonight as I will not be in town.
City of Chula Vista June 14thCity Council Meeting Input for I Love to Glean I want to thank Republic Services for building an annual funding program for food recovery organizations into your ongoing plans. It is critical to the success of Chula Vista food recovery businesses that we get adequate funding to build the infrastructure so that we can do the work we love to do which is feeding those in need and helping to save the environment.
Feeding agencies in Chula Vista are trusted to manage Millions and Millions of dollars worth of food safely and to get it to those in need. We add value to the system, and we need all the help we can get to build capacity to manage the increasing volumes.
I want to share a little background on how I Love to Glean came to be in April of 2020. The idea for I Love to Glean was created by the South San Diego County Food Recovery Network which met for ~ 2+ years in Chula Vista on a monthly basis. The group was led by myself and Dave DiDonato from the City of Chula Vista. This network of organizations and businesses created relationships to collaborate on food recovery and redistribution and defined their collective needs. The group came up with the solution of creating a food hub that would form a regional backbone for capacity building in South San Diego County. Since our inception in 2020 I Love to Glean has delivered over 3. 6 million pounds of food in San Diego County with a volunteer army of 40 organizations and hundreds of volunteers. This food had a value of over $ 4 million dollars. Out of the last 82 weeks we have completed 78 distributions every Tuesday benefitting residents of Chula Vista plus additional distributions in South County.
The concept for I Love to Glean was to create the systems and infrastructure that would serve as a support mechanism for area feeding agencies. There would be a central location where we could have a large, shared space to store food and to safely hold it for agency partners that collaborated with us until they could distribute it. There would be capacity for many truckfuls of food needing dry, cold, and frozen storage. Each agency would have a space for their overflow products and there would be a place for food for sharing between organizations would be kept.
We would have safe vehicles for transportation. We often joked about keeping the trucks together with duct tape, but it really isn’t a joke at all. Feeding organizations all struggle to keep these workhorses in shape but without adequate funding that is nearly impossible.
Adequate paid staff would oversee the programs, handle logistics, volunteer coordination, and drivers. I can tell you first hand that we have weathered the storm of Covid and the increased need for food, but Warning:
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it has taken a great toll. Volunteer Leaders and key volunteer staff are burned out, they should not have to work another job just to pay their rent as well as run feeding organizations.
I could go on and on, but the main point is that we appreciate you. We see that you are responding to our needs and hope that we can continue to work towards more collaborations in the future.
Thank you for your time.
Karen Clay
President, I Love to Glean
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