Dear Friend,

September is Hunger Action Month, so I want to highlight our very busy Food Pantry.

For the past eight weeks, Friends In Deed has been breaking our own records: serving an average of nearly 700 households per week, and receiving and picking up more than 10,000 pounds of food each week from the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank. These deliveries are packed with shelf-stable staples, fresh fruits and vegetables, and protein, ensuring our pantry shelves stay full and our neighbors have access to healthy, nourishing meals.

Every Friday, a truck arrives with the order our team placed just days before. And on Saturday, dedicated volunteers head out to the Food Bank once again to pick up even more. It’s a rhythm of teamwork and commitment that keeps food flowing into our community. 

Food insecurity is a major problem in our society, one that often goes unnoticed by the larger public. Families are struggling to put meals on the table, send their children to school with nourishing lunches and snacks, and still manage to pay rent. And this is where you can help!

Our Cooking for a Cause chef competition event is just a few weeks away! This year, all of the funds raised will go directly towards Food Pantry operations. It’s a super-fun night featuring chef teams made up of local culinary school students. You don’t want to miss it! On-site space is limited, so now is the time to become a sponsor or buy a ticket!

If you can’t make it to Cooking for a Cause, there’s still a powerful way to be part of the action. We’ve launched a $10,000 Crowdfunding Challenge to keep our Food Pantry shelves stocked and our neighbors nourished. Every $63 feeds a family of four for a week (although donations of any size are welcome), so your gift goes straight from pantry to plate. Together, we can ensure that no family in our community has to choose between paying rent and putting food on the table.

Finally, at the end of this month, we will be saying goodbye to Tish Inong, our Director of Street Outreach and Housing, who is relocating out of state. Tish has been with us for over 3 years, and in that time has grown, developed, and professionalized our program into one of the leading teams in Pasadena. We will miss her and wish her all the best in her new position! As such, we are now searching for a new director. Please share this job description to help us find a great candidate.

Blessings and have a lovely weekend,

Rabbi Joshua

We can only operate with your help!

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At Friends In Deed, we honor the dignity and privacy of every person we serve. The stories we share are real, but sometimes, we change names or minor details or use stock photos to protect our clients’ identities. Thanks for your compassion, understanding, and support.

Friends In Deed is committed to fostering, cultivating, and preserving a culture of diversity, equity and inclusion. We embrace and celebrate the spectrum of our employees’, volunteers’, and clients’ ages, color, ability or disability, ethnicity, family or marital status, gender identity or expression, language, national origin, physical and mental ability, political affiliation, race, religion, sexual orientation, socio-economic status, veteran status, neurodiversity, and other characteristics that make our employees, volunteers, and clients unique.