Sonoma County possesses an embarrassment of riches when it comes to the agricultural bounty the region produces. However, it’s a bounty that requires a certain amount of riches to afford in a place with such a high cost of living index. Ron Karp, executive director of the Forestville nonprofit, Food For Thought, has been working to bring that bounty of nutritious goods to those who struggle with food insecurity since 1996.
“I think the people who have the most need are almost invisible. People who are sick tend to hide out,” says Karp. “And there’s a lot of food insecurity in the local Latino community because of the lack of access to grocery stores and affordable, healthy options in their neighborhoods. There are little pockets of poverty all over the county.”
Those “pockets of poverty,” along with certain medically-challenged groups, are what Karp and his team focus on. The nonprofit’s mission is to foster health and healing with food and compassion. The organization was founded in 1988 during the AIDS epidemic to provide groceries to the seriously ill. Since then, it’s expanded services to include low-income clients affected by a wide range of medical conditions and at risk of malnutrition. “We learned that we needed to make changes in the food we were giving out, and in the past five or six years we’ve distributed food specifically tailored to the individual based on their dietary and health needs,” he says.
A few of the specialized programs Food For Thought developed cater to pregnant women in the community who have trouble accessing healthy food, patients who are currently undergoing cancer treatments and those experiencing homelessness.
Karp says the organization’s “Bags of Love” program for the homeless provides easily eaten food that doesn’t require cooking and is enough for about 12 meals that can fit in a backpack for the homeless. That program serves 1,200 or more homeless people a year. The bags are delivered to local social services and health care agencies that distribute them to people experiencing homelessness who are struggling with serious medical conditions.
In 2020, the organization served more than 4,000 people living with HIV, COVID-19 and congestive heart failure; those recently released from the hospital who are at risk of malnutrition, and seriously-ill people experiencing homelessness. Food For Thought’s “Loving Spoonful Kitchen” program prepares nutritious menu selections including soups, stews, salads, chili and other items for clients. However, preparing meals isn’t without its challenges.
“Our future vision is to get our own kitchen to prepare food. We’ve been in five or six kitchens around Sonoma County,” Karp says. Supply chain issues and a lack of staffing and volunteers due to coronavirus uncertainty are challenges the organization faced during the past year.
The services, offered in English and Spanish, include nutrition counseling with a registered dietitian. More than half of its clients receive delivery service, provided by volunteers because they are homebound as a result of illness, being unsheltered, isolated after a positive COVID-19 diagnosis, or lacking transportation. The majority of the organization’s clients live in extreme poverty: 75% earn less than $18,000 per year, and more than 20% experienced homelessness last year.
“Recently our staff was serving a place where 14 farmworkers were living in a cabin in Cloverdale that had to quarantine because of COVID-19 and housing issues,” Karp says.
Food For Thought is a member of the California Food Is Medicine Coalition (CalFIMC), an association of community-based nonprofit organizations that provide healthy meals and support to individuals facing serious illness, including many clients who do not qualify for other free and low-cost meal services.
