Lindaben Foundation Inc

Client Choice Community Food Distribution Program: Our Client Choice Community Food Distribution Program empowers individuals and families to select the food items that best meet their cultural, dietary, and personal preferences. This program operates daily and served over 16K households in 2024. Families are able to choose from fresh produce, shelf-stable goods, dairy, protein, and culturally specific staples. The program distributed more than 390K pounds of food valued at approximately $780K. This approach enhances dignity, reduces food waste, and strengthens community trust.

Mobile Food Market: We operate a mobile food market twice a month, reaching over 70 families per month in communities facing transportation and access barriers. The market distributes fresh produce, pantry staples, and hygiene products on a first-come, first-serve basis. In 2024, we distributed over 72,000 pounds of food, valued at approximately $180,000. Nutritional consultations and culturally relevant taste tests were conducted during onsite events.

Food as Medicine Program: Our Food as Medicine program provides families, especially those from Title I schools and immigrant and refugee communities, with monthly prescription food boxes that contain fresh produce, pantry staples, and health education materials. In 2024, we served over 573 families each month across 8+ schools. In total, the program distributed over 420K LB's of fresh food and shelf stable food. Educational content tailored to cultural preferences and chronic disease prevention is included in every box.

Healthy Schools Nutrition Education: We hosted 22 workshops at various schools. Topics included healthy eating on a budget, prediabetes screening. lifestyle coaching, fresh food taste testing, and culturally inclusive cooking. Over 5,000 students and families engaged with our materials. Nutrition education was valued at an estimated $32,000 in staff time and materials.

Blessings In A Backpack: This program provides weekend power packs of kid friendly snacks to students. Each week the students in the program receive a pre-prepared package of snacks so they have something to eat on the weekend. These snacks are handed out by our school partners to students identified as most in need. On a weekly basis 200 students receive snack packs with an annual cost of $35K (7600 units).

Community Garden Initiatives: In partnership with St. Francis of Assisi Church & Riverdale Elementary School, we operated community gardens with over 2,500 square feet of growing space. We provided for the garden's fertilizer/soil, plants, storage sheds, gardening tools and water supply along with constructing fences to protect the gardens. The gardens yielded more than 1200 pounds of fresh produce donated to our food pantry and mobile markets.