This Q&A is part of a series highlighting the work of the 2020 Funds to Feed Grantees, community organizations who provided critical food during the COVID-19 pandemic. Answers have been edited for clarity and length.
Abby Loza, one-n-ten's Youth Center operations manager, sat down with LISC to talk about the impact of their Funds to Feed project.
What was your organization doing before the pandemic? What new opportunities opened up because of your Funds to Feed project?
Abby Loza: The agency has always tried to help young folks who came to us in need, especially if it was food. If we didn’t have something on site, we would send them to a different agency. That’s the biggest difference. With the Funds to Feed Grant, we didn’t have to send them to another agency. We were able to provide basic needs, and we were able to provide healthy foods. As an agency, we are trying to empower youth to have healthy lives. So that was huge.
But it wasn’t just our youth we were able to help. We reached out to New Pathways for Youth, and there were folks in the community who would just see the signs about the food and come. The buzz around the healthy food and the fact that there were not huge barriers to get around to get it was just fantastic. The response that we got from our youth, and the communities surrounding our agency and the other agencies that we reached out to was just outstanding.
How did you use the Funds to Feed Grant money? What new partnerships formed because of the project?
We used the grant money for two different programs – meal kits and grocery delivery. We did meal kits two days a week at the center. We reached out to youth for meal suggestions. We wanted to make sure everyone who wanted to be a part of it was represented. We also made sure that every one of them had a vegan option and an omnivore option.
The boxes were built for a family of four. If there were more than four people in the household, they were able to get multiple bags. It included a recipe for how to prepare the meal. We were able to give fresh herbs, fresh vegetables, fresh fruit. In addition to food, we were able to provide other things we had on hand -- socks, hand sanitizer, face masks, safe-sex products, you name it. We could provide other things that came in during the pandemic that we had nowhere to put and nobody coming in to use.
Nearly every Sunday we’d have a program that streamed live on how to cook the meal. We got such a great response from our youth specifically about how the family was all getting together and doing dinner together. It was just cool that not only did they get healthy food, but they were preparing meals and making the occasion something special with their family or with their chosen family.
The smaller-scale grocery home-delivery program was a great way to reach the families that had any barriers to coming down to the youth center. Staple items were included in every order, but those in the program also could choose 10 to 15 items of their own. They did utilize the funds in a great way because the products they chose were things that would last a long time and feed the family for a long time.
Can you share the positive aspects of incorporating cultural practices and histories in your project and how the cultural focus helped reach new communities?
Using local farmers was huge for us. Being able to give that money back to the state, back to local businesses was great. When we first started out, that was one of the biggest things we wanted to do. Honestly, when we first started, we were worried that the costs were going to be too great or the logistics too hard. But it was amazing. I couldn’t believe how seamless the whole thing went. Even if there wasn’t the exact amount of rosemary or mangoes that I was looking for, the person that I coordinated with would call and would say you might want to try this in it or that. We’d get it all worked out to be able to fit the same budget. That was the best part of that program, being able to connect with the local farmers and then connecting that with the people who were coming through. Everyone was asking where is this from? Where did you get this? Not only did we get our services out for folks who probably really need it, but we were able to share things that normally I don’t know that an LGBTQ youth center would be pushing. That was a connection I’m sure that would have not been made.
We reached out to Puente Youth and other youth-serving organizations like the YMCA, Big Brothers/Big Sisters to send youth, send youths’ families who need assistance. It was cool to get to know other agencies and see how we can collaborate on different things, not just food. It gave us an opportunity to learn about each other a lot more than we did before.
Did the Funds to Feeds Grant and your project support new community leaders?
As far as leadership goes, it helped a lot of people in our organization. We were nervous that volunteers would not come because of the pandemic, and there was absolutely no way we could do this without volunteers. I felt like everybody involved in the program took on a form of leadership, and it helped us grow as a team. The leadership that it brought on was far more than any of us expected.
Why is this work important to your community? In other words, how will this impact future generations?
Anybody learning to eat food that tastes good in a healthy way is a way to affect a generation. If you’re taught to eat healthy, you’ll teach others to eat healthy. Having access to healthy food is something that should be common, but it’s not. Hopefully, just even the exposure to healthy food we were able to do with the grant will be to enough to affect generations that were able to participate in it. Because we serve young folks, there’s a real possibility that that can happen.
The Funds to Feed Grant was about seeding a future, not just responding to the urgencies of COVID-19. What do you believe will be the lasting impact of your project?
For me in terms of lasting impact, it’s seeing that one•n•ten can continue something like this in the future, seeing that we can do our work in a way that is conducive to uplifting other agencies and local, hard-working farmers and people in our community. I see that as the best thing that can come out of this for the future of one•n•ten.
What is one thing you learned from this past year?
The pandemic months have been a tough time for sure. I’ve watched our youth go through so many different emotions and stages through his pandemic. We’re all adapting, we’re growing. But I feel like we’ve been able access youth that we were never able to access before, because there were physical barriers or whatever it might have been. By doing virtual programs and making sure we’re doing programs that were inclusive of every community, we were able to reach youth that otherwise we likely would not have ever had access to. They’ve come on board and really have become a huge part of our organization, and we’ve never met in person. We’ve never seen each other live, and they have contributed so much to our programs and the content of our programming.
During this pandemic there have been so many political things on the table that have been important for trans and non-binary youth and the LGBTQ community in general, but also things that are really fear-invoking and things that also brought joy. We still were able to celebrate those things and be a big part of them, even though we couldn’t in person. The fact that we’re going to make a point to continue offering our services virtually and reaching folks who can’t come in physically. I think that’s great.