Pam has worked at Food Share for a little over nine years. She has one of the most important roles at the organization – managing the 190 food pantries and other agencies that “shop” at Food Share to provide food direct to the community. Why do you work at Food Share? I relate to the families that we serve as I experienced hunger as a child growing up in a loving and hardworking family of nine. We picked...
Courtesy of support from Feeding America, Food Share has recently provided grant funding to 28 food pantries in Ventura County enabling them to purchase items like refrigerators and iPads that support their operational capacity and ability to serve the community. This latest round of agency enhancement grants follows on from an initial round provided by Feeding America in 2021. Gary Cooper, Pantry Coordinator at Sacred Heart Church Food Pantry at Cabrillo Village, wrote to express the difference...
Gina Howey, and her husband, Walter Burstein, were busy family doctors in Ventura County before they went into semi-retirement and began volunteering with Food Share in 2020. They stopped to chat on their way back from an early morning “bread run” about Gina’s passion for truck driving and how food insecurity can hide in plain sight. “A Harvester newsletter came to the house, and I was reading about volunteer opportunities,” says Gina Howey, explaining how she and...
Jessie is a client at Still Water’s Pantry in Simi Valley. I live with my husband and we also have one of our older granddaughters living with us, along with her son and her daughter. My husband is a massage therapist and I’m a manicurist so work has been off and on. We had to figure things out. How to, you know, pay Peter without robbing Paul. When I started coming to the pantry I was just excited....
Gina is a client at Still Water’s Pantry in Simi Valley. I’ve lived in Simi Valley for approximately 15 years. I’m a single mom of five kids, three biological and two that I’ve adopted. I started coming to the food pantry three or four years ago. At one stage my ex-husband and I had a very successful business. When he left, I had no funds to take care of my children. I’m not homeless, so I felt like...
Food Share is honored to have been recognized as a Central Coast Best Place to Work by the Pacific Coast Business Times for the second year in a row. The publication conducts an annual survey among employees in the Tri-Counties and then crunches the data to determine the best of the best. During the height of the pandemic, Food Share created an employee engagement committee that continues to meet monthly, open...
We’re thrilled to welcome Yissel Barajas, Chief Human Resources Officer for Reiter Affiliated Companies (RAC) to Food Share’s Board of Directors. As part of her role at RAC and her personal passion, Yissel participates in community projects that impact the farm worker community. The daughter of farm workers, she has a personal commitment to health, housing, and other issues impacting the quality of life of the farm worker community. As part of her commitment to her...
Dave Orr, a volunteer who runs Food Share’s gleaning program, is passionate about saving crops from being wasted. “We are so lucky to live in an area with abundant fresh food, yet so many people in our community can’t afford to buy it at the supermarket,” he notes. “Gleaning gets fresh food that would go to waste onto the tables of people who really need it.” Dave Orr Dave started gleaning with Food Share about eight years ago....
Leadership consultant Gloria Miele, Ph.D. lives in San Diego now, but the Camarillo native remains devoted to the county where she grew up—especially when it comes to Food Share of Ventura County. “I feel like I’m part of a long legacy of community supporters,” Miele said. “My mom was a Food Share volunteer in the ‘80s and would help with food distribution, back when it was mainly government cheese—those big blocks of Velveeta.”
Gloria with her mom and husband.
Congratulations to the California Air National Guard’s 146th Airlift Wing, which recently beat out 89 other Airlift Wings across the United States to receive the Maj. Gen. Stanley F.H. Newman Award. The award is given annually to the most outstanding Air National Guard wing and was awarded in recognition of the 146th Airlift Wing’s exceptionally meritorious service supporting wildfire suppression and COVID-19 pandemic relief efforts. Service members from the 146th were initially stationed at Food Share...
