Food Access Programs in Fairfax: Our Daily Bread… Help others receive the nutrition they need.
High-income areas such as Fairfax County are no stranger to food access programs. Fairfax County needs these food access programs just as low-income counties do. One well-known program in Fairfax County is Our Daily Bread.
ODB helps to feed over 350 families a year by using their own personal food closet as well as partnering up with churches and other food access programs.
“[Food access] is very important. A lot of people see Fairfax County as being very wealthy. There’s not a huge understanding of how much need there is. We can’t keep up with the need, there’s so much. We have emergency food delivery. Our food waitlist to get onto our food program is about 50 families. It’s about a 2-3 month wait,” said Christina Garris, the Food Manager at ODB.
Food access tends to be overlooked in Fairfax County.
“Because there is a class of people that are well off, I don’t think people see the many families that are struggling to make it. And it’s not always families that you would think,” said Garris, “We have families where one of the parents have lost their jobs, it could be something like a medical issue, you have families that are living paycheck to paycheck and next thing you know they can no longer pay their rent or feed their families. It’s very easy to slip into that role of needing to reach out to a non-profit to get assistance.”
Concentrating on helping low-income families become self-sufficient, ODB differs from other food access programs in Fairfax because they do not serve the homeless.
“We work with low-income families in Fairfax County and they need to be in a crisis,” said Garris.
Although ODB does cater to low-income families, you do not have to have to children to receive assistance, you can be single or a single couple.
“We have a financial assistance program where we can help with rent, utilities, and car repair if their working; to help them get back and forth to their jobs. We have financial literacy and that’s where we work with simple budgeting, credit, education to help our clients understand how to improve their situation. We have a new program called Project Bridge, where for a year we’ll work intensely with a family. They have to be working in order to get into the program but we’ll look at a lot of their family issues and we might hook up with another nonprofit such as Dress For Success in getting them extra training to help them move up in their job/find a new job. We really look to help this family become self-sufficient and become educated,” said Garris.
When getting assistance from ODB the longest that you can receive benefits is a year.
Garris said, “If you’re on our waitlist for the food program, you stay on the list for four months and receive food delivered to your home every other month, or you get a food gift-card. If you’re being mentored and you’re in our financial literacy program, you stay on our list for six months. If you’re in Project Bridge then you stay on for 9months during the 12 months you’re in that program. We have different stages.”
Partnering with about 21-25 churches in Fairfax, ODB has also recently helped to found a network for food nonprofits called, The Food Providers, where places that have food pantries such as Food For Others, get together about every six weeks and talk about how they can partner with one another because they all do things a little differently.
Garris has been the Food Manager at ODB for six years.
“I thought I would do something globally but I was so surprised, having lived in Fairfax County 23 years, at the need that I saw right here in my hometown,” said Garris.
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