ORANGEVALE, California — The Orangevale-Fair Oaks Food Bank seeks assistance identifying two suspects who stole its generator, posting surveillance images on social media, and offering a $900 reward in return.
Food banks are community organizations that provide families with essential resources, including food, to help them through times of hardship due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Often, these families need assistance meeting basic needs; food banks provide these essential services.
The Mission
Orangevale families in our current economy often struggle to meet their monthly basic needs. Our mission is to rally our community behind them and provide temporary assistance until they can meet these requirements independently. Food, resources, and hope are our tools. Brad has long been a resident of Orangevale and serves as founder/executive director of the Orangevale-Fair Oaks Community Foundation, an organization responsible for numerous programs such as Orangevale Food Bank Farm, Big Day of Service, and HART of Orangevale & Fair Oaks. He is passionate about cultivating relationships, local community engagement, and human flourishing, spending his free time with his wife and three kids. Additionally, he spent 15 years creating, building, and exiting an operations management software business with customers worldwide.
The Vision
Orangevale Food Bank was established to bring hope and nourish basic needs within our community, building relationships between people in different parts of Orangevale. People have shown incredible generosity when helping those in need directly and through volunteering opportunities at Orangevale Food Bank.
As a Social Impact Entrepreneur, Armoni is dedicated to being a catalyst that equips community members with positive mindsets and resources necessary for productive contributions to society. For over twelve years, he has served Northern California communities as a counselor, speaker, consultant, outreach worker, youth mentor, or youth mentor in various capacities.
Brad is an expert at developing healthy organizational cultures and strengthening communities. He is responsible for numerous programs such as Big Day of Service, Orangevale-Fair Oaks Food Bank Farm, and HART of OV-FO – to name a few – in his community. Furthermore, for 15 years, he was involved with creating, building, and eventually selling off an operations management software business that specialized in operations management software he also founded. Finally, he is passionate about service, building community engagement, and human flourishing – something you won’t find in his company!
The Goals
Orangevale Food Bank helps hundreds of families meet their monthly basic needs by mobilizing community support. Through the COMMUNITY FARM initiative, it grows and distributes fresh produce directly to clients, providing nutrition assistance through CalFresh and Commodity Supplemental Food programs (which help low-income residents), as well as weekly shower programs and meal distributions to homeless neighbors through its HART of OV-FO program.
The Future
Now, more than ever, our struggling neighbors need your support. In LA County alone, one out of every five residents do not know where their next meal will come from – with the COVID-19 pandemic and rising food costs worsening matters.
The Grange has long been supporting our community’s needs through various efforts – from providing land grants that helped to establish Orangevale to helping build our library and delivering electricity throughout Orangevale. Perhaps its greatest strength lies in connecting people and being an engine of generosity within our local communities.
Under today’s climate of instability, food banks have never been more crucial. Our neighbors depend on us each month – over 2,500! That’s why we launched a project to expand our capacity and serve even more of them than before.
This new facility will include a refrigerated truck hub to store and distribute perishable goods, a sustainability station to oversee recycling and organic composting, expanded warehouse storage for canned and frozen foods, as an energy-saving solar system from GRID Alternatives North Valley that will reduce energy costs and offset refrigeration expenses.
