Khalsa Food Pantry is going strong! Rain or shine, our Sevadaars are there.

Our annual winter holiday event was attended by over 1000 families who received many toys, clothes, and food items to enjoy. Our volunteers were enthusiasm to serve all day long for over 12 hours setting up, distributing, sharing goodwill with guests and cleaning up. Memorable event as always! Khalsa Food Pantry continues to be a meaningful resource for our neighboring community. 

Khalsa Food Pantry is continuing to provide a large variety of staple pantry items and fresh produce each week to hundreds of low income families. Each week, many come to us to pickup necessary food items, in addition to diapers, hygiene products and books and toys.

In August, we assembled and distributed 500 backpacks filled with school supplies! We also assembled and distributed 1500 Khalsa Kits - full of hygiene essential to people in need. 

We are gearing up for our Winter Events where volunteers will assemble thousands of bags of gifts, winter warmth and food items that will be distributed during Thanksgiving and Winter Holidays.

We are grateful to Vaheguru for giving us this seva! 

We are out here serving every single Friday, rain or shine, windy or in 100+ degree heat! Volunteers continue to show up to help sort, setup and distribute to a couple hundred families. We're greatful for the opportunity to do this seva. Many volunteers have gone off to college and are back for the summer and we are still looking for volunteers to regularly come help each week. If anyone is ever interested in helping, please come out!

The fuel behind the Khalsa Food Pantry is the spirit of Chardikala! From the volunteers who come out in big numbers and the families who find hope in the food and medical assistance that we provide. We continue to serve 400-500 per week through a streamlined drive-through pick up! Our partnership with LA Food Bank along with generous donations by community members allows us to provide high quality produce and pantry items for a community that truly needs it. We are ever-grateful for the support of our donors, local community leaders and volunteers!  

As we come to year end, it gives us a chance to reflect and review how far we've come. This year we served over 25,000 families worth of food. In addition we partnered with local community clinics and resources to help underserved communities get access to vaccines, resources, toys, food, winter warmth items and more. We navigated through unknown and uncertain food supplies and contracts as well. We came through it and are now serving on average of 4-500 families each week still.

The latest Covid numbers in LA County are concerning and we anticipate there will be an uptick in numbers for familes needing assistance. 

In early December we held our annual Sharing and Caring event where we served over 1,000 families food, toys, and winter warmth bags. 

We are grateful to our donors, community members and most importantly the volunteers that have dedicated countless hours to ensure the Khalsa food Pantry continues fighting food insecurity.

Just like our last update, we are still going strong! We have seen a slight drop in our average numbers of families down to 400. This is probably due to schools re-opening, our fresh produce supply, and people returning back to work. It's great to know that less people might be in need and are relying on food pantries like ours.

We are also experiencing a shortage of volunteers since many of our college students are going back to or moving to colleges. We're so happy for them and grateful to all their support and help for the last 1.5 years. We would not have been able to serve nearly as many families without them.

The supply of fresh produce, dairy, staple goods and other supplies has been winding down since the USDA government programs ended back in June. Food banks are also feeling the strain of demand since more food pantries are now open. The US coast guard is also now not able to help as much to pack and distribute food kits. This has caused a number of small hurdles for us but we're optimistic and overcoming them slowly.

As we look into options of how we are going to be sustainable and continue running the food pantry with less volunteers, less food supplies, and less clients relying on us, we are hopeful that we have provided a resource to the hundreds of families that needed us. We're going to no doubt stay open since we have been every single week since 2013. But we will have to strategize and be creative.

Much of our equipment needs to be serviced soon as well; forklift tires and full tune-up, 24' reefer truck needs service and possibly replaced soon, and a new freezer to store left overs and supplies along with other operational costs. We're grateful for any donations we can receive. 

As everything around is trying to get back to normal and re-opening, the Khalsa Food Pantry team has been continuing our work to provide food and resource assistance to the communities that are in need and affected the most. 

We are now averaging about 650 to 1000 families each week, which puts us around 50k families served each year. The demand is still strong and very much there for this San Fernando and Pacoima community that has been hit hard by Covid. As we work through the government and food supply changes, we are still striving to source and provide a healthy and balanced meal along with hygiene kits, clothing, resources and now vaccines!

In March 2021 we partnered with a local medical clinics organization that has been since provided thousands of vaccines to our clients and the local community we serve. We are now a well known and established center and resource for vaccines and information that the community can depend on. Based on some recent polling and research, as much as 50% of the local community in Pacoima is still not vaccinated. We wanted to provide an easy and safe way for the communtiy to come out and get their first and second doses and have been one of the longest open vaccine clinics where as other clinics have popped up and shut down.

We are grateful to all the sponsors, volunteers, and partnerships that make the KFP what it is today. 

We wanted to take a moment to relay a few key updates from the Khalsa Food Pantry. A year ago when Covid-19 hit, we realized our call to action and started forming emergency response networks where Khalsa Food Pantry was going to be a key part of.

I wanted to take a moment to express our deepest gratitude to all our volunteers, sponsors and supporters. Thanks to your support, we have fed thousands of families and provided them millions of pounds of food (about 3.8M since the pandemic). We are working hard to continue providing food assistance and resources to our local communities. This requires an exceptional amount of work by extraordinary volunteers every single week. Many will be going back to work and school soon and there will inevitably be changes and hiccups with the food supplies and logistics. Nothing we can’t and won’t be able to handle.

While we serve anywhere from 500 to 900 families on average each week at our drive thru food pantry and provide food to partner pantries to feed another few thousand families, we are a relatively streamlined and small operation. We are a fairly small group of volunteers that is predominantly young, energetic and passionate. We also must ensure that every volunteer stays safe, feels comfortable and wants to continue to come back to do sewa with us.

Our future strategy will all depend on the food supply, donations, and how the food banks distribute and support the flow. We are also in the beggining stages of providing vaccines to the clients that come to recieve food. This is an extremely hard hit and vulnerable community and we will continue to support them however we can. 

The Khalsa Food Pantry has seen a sustained and dramatic increase in demand for food assistance during the Covid-19 pandemic. We are serving 700+ familes at our main location in Pacoima and another 250-500 familes across southern California each week! We've served over 3 million pounds of food this year alone. This is only possible because of our amazing volunteers, donors and partnerships. 

Waheguru Ji Ka Khalsa, Waheguru Ji Ki Fateh,
 
KCF Food Pantry wants to personally thank you. Without your support, we would not be able to provide the food that we do. This year, KCF Pantry has grown in quality and number. We serve an average of 70 families a week. No matter what the weather, rain or shine, families are always here. With your support, we have been able to provide fresh fruits and vegetables every single week. The smiles that form on the families’ faces with they see the variety is beyond words. Once again, we thank you for your continuous support.

Harbinder Kaur

Harbinder, better known as Binde, always makes time out her busy schedule to come to a pantry.Mother of 3 and business owner, Binde come early every Friday to take inventory, sort out the produce, and keep everything flowing smoothly. There is not a moment where she is doing nothing. We are lucky to have her in our Food Pantry!