We are proud to have served a meal every single night for over thirty years, but the truth is that vulnerable community members have many needs beyond food.
The consistency of our nightly meal service enables us to get to know and build trust with our guests. This allows us to discuss available service options and guide them to programs that best match their individual preferences and needs.
Our connections with fellow agencies allow us to help in ways that make a difference. This strengthens the interwoven threads necessary to build resilient, helpful, and effective communities.
We form relationships with fellow nonprofits and city/county service providers who are able to help our clients address these additional needs, such as:
Medical care
Housing
Employment
Mental health services
Substance abuse treatment
Every day we work closely with food donors to rescue good food that would otherwise be thrown away.
We rescue food from:
Major grocery stores
Bakeries and coffee shops
Restaurants
Farmer’s markets
Catering companies
Film and TV studios and film shoots
And folks who stop at our door to drop off their homegrown fruit & vegetables, boxes of pasta, bags of rice, or canned goods they’ve raised by going door to door in their neighborhood.
We make it easy for potential donors to help rescue food. As Community Builders, we work with potential donors and volunteers to make it easier to donate food. We are delighted to help people brainstorm ways to rescue, donate, and access food. Get in touch by clicking here.(Link to Exchange contact info)
Our Community Exchange is a free concierge food sharing program. It fills a vital niche for our small and midsize nonprofit collaborators. Our program provides them with healthy food at no cost, allowing them to direct funds to other critical client needs.
Smaller and midsize nonprofits demonstrate better client outcomes when they are able to provide high quality nutritious meals, but they consistently struggle to access fresh, nutritious food within their own limited resources. We fill in this gap.
Our collaborators provide supportive services to:
Single mothers escaping from abusive homes
Disadvantaged senior citizens
People who have physical and/or mental disabilities
People who fight drug and alcohol addiction
Kids living on the streets
Cooking, organizing, chopping, sorting and serving food takes lots of hands. It takes as many as thirty volunteers each day to get it all done. This adds up to thousands of volunteers a year, helping prepare and serve our meal or helping share food through our Community Exchange.
For many, volunteering at HoFoCo dissolves the boundaries between “us” and “them”.
The true connective tissue of community is based on small, interpersonal connections that happen every day. Every day our volunteers work to strengthen these connections in small but powerful ways.
Those experiencing poverty and homelessness on our streets are highly visible, but their stories are often unknown. Members of the larger community make assumptions and do not fully understand, and are often profoundly disconnected from the reality of the lives of their unhoused neighbors.
Whether you join us to prepare or serve our Community Dinner or help us share food with other organizations through our Community Exchange, volunteering with the Hollywood Food Coalition helps us build a stronger community for our volunteers, guests and collaborating non-profits.
