What does it look like when a food recovery partnership becomes more than a delivery? Recently, ProduceGood and Community Resource Center (CRC) got to find out.
CRC staff and volunteers joined us for a private gleaning event in Encinitas, working side by side to harvest fresh produce generously donated by an Encinitas resident, Angela. The produce then made its way back to CRC’s market to nourish neighbors right here in the Encinitas community. The crew picked more than CRC’s pantry could receive for that week’s distributions, so the abundance was shared with two other ProduceGood feeding partners, Jewish Family Services and Solana Beach Free Farmers Market.
In just a few hours, we saw the vision behind our Neighborhood Food Network come to life. The Network was created to deepen our relationships with a smaller group of core feeding partners, moving beyond a transactional model of simply delivering food toward meaningful, two-way partnerships. The goal is to understand one another’s needs, create opportunities to collaborate, and increase the impact we have together.
This glean was a beautiful example of that shift. CRC wasn’t just receiving recovered produce – their staff and volunteers were part of the recovery itself. A local resident donated the abundance, and CRC and ProduceGood came together as neighbors to work side by side and recover it. Then, CRC put that food back into the hands of local families. That is the closed loop we’re working toward: stronger partnerships, deeper community engagement, and more food nourishing the neighborhoods where it was grown.
We’re grateful to CRC for showing us what this can look like when we go beyond food recovery alone and start building a more connected local food system together.
Interested in hosting a private gleaning event to benefit the folks your organization serves? Contact Kiyonna at kiyonna@producegood.org.
