Alert and curious, 7-month- old Ismael Cervantes gawked at the stacks of fruits and vegetables and cheery banners hanging from the rafters of the Community Food Share store. His mother, Patricia, snuggled him and the baby carrier close to her shoulder as she sacked her groceries.
“Food is so expensive,” the mother of three said. “So this place is a very good benefit for my family.”
For 24 years, Community Food Share has helped struggling families in Boulder and Broomfield counties. In many of those families, the parents often hold more than one job to try to make ends meet. But because they often labor in service industries or seasonal businesses, they scramble just to pay rent and heating bills, and have little cash left for decent, balanced meals.
Cervantes’ husband, for example, works in landscaping, a business that generally slows down this time of year. For her young family, Community Food Share represents the difference between eating properly and doing without the basic nutrition that growing youngsters need.
Community Food Share clients illustrate the hidden poverty beneath the deceptively upscale surface in Boulder and Broomfield. A startling 10 percent of the people in the two counties (about 30,000) live below the official poverty line, which is measured at a paltry $17,000 per year for a family of four.
“Just above that poverty line is no picnic either, and that’s where a lot of our clients are at,” said Terri Tedeschi, the program’s development director.
Community Food Share has applied for a Post-News Season to Share grant to support its diverse programs, all of which address a core need – access to nutritious food.
Located in an industrial park near Longmont, Community Food Share provides groceries to 90 nonprofit agencies, such as homeless shelters, safe houses and the Boulder County AIDS Center.
But unlike many food banks, Community Food Share also lets about 200 clients shop once a week directly at the warehouse through its Feeding Family program. The clients have been qualified through other, cooperating nonprofit organizations, which provide vouchers that let the clients obtain the groceries for free.
The largest nonprofit agency referring clients to Community Food Share is the I Have a Dream Foundation, which adopts classes of about 50 children each and provides college assistance if the students graduate from high school. By providing food, the program creates stability and helps the children stay in school.
In addition, Community Food Share operates two mobile sites where clients can shop twice a month. Another effort, called Elder Share, provides food for disabled and low-income seniors several times a week.
Yet another program gives out weekly food bags at Longmont’s Columbine Elementary School, where 85 percent of the students qualify for the free-lunch program. Children in such impoverished families may not get decent food over the weekend, so a program called Feed the Future provides food bags to eligible families. Last year, about 400 families participated in the effort.
“I think the kids really take pride in being able to go home with those food sacks, because they know that by being there to collect them, they’re contributing to their families,” said Jim Baldwin, Community Food Share’s chief executive.
Like most Colorado counties, the public-assistance offices in Boulder and Broomfield experienced major computer problems this year and were often unable to process applications and other paperwork. Rather than let people leave in frustration, the county’s social services offices asked Community Food Share to provide thousands of boxes of groceries to clients.
In all, the agency estimates its programs distribute food to 15,000 to 20,000 people in the two counties every year.
More than a third of the food is donated by local companies. The rest is provided by the federal government, events such as food drives, other food banks and a nationwide nonprofit called America’s Second Harvest.
Hanging from the warehouse’s ceiling are colorful banners, hand-painted by local schoolchildren. Written in English and Spanish and depicting various types of food, the banners help clients locate products in each major group recommended by the U.S. government’s latest nutritional pyramid.
The banners certainly caught the eye of little Ismael, but his stomach was more likely to enjoy the literal fruits of Community Food Share’s many volunteers and donors.
How to donate
Post-News Season to Share, a fund of the McCormick Tribune Foundation, gave more than $1.65 million to 63 agencies serving children, the hungry, the homeless and those in need of medical care last year. Donations are matched at 50 cents for each dollar, and 100 percent of all donations go directly to local charitable agencies. To make a donation, call 1-800-508-2928 or visit www.seasontoshare.com.
