Born in March 2020 from a partnership between Hang Out Do Good, a loose-knit activist group, and HoFoCo, the Sunday Lunch Bags initiative has provided over 500,000 lunch bags to food-insecure individuals across Los Angeles.
Here are some numbers about this collaborative effort of HODG and HoFoCo:
- 2,500 lunch bags on average each week, with peaks of 6,500 at the height of the pandemic;
- Average of 250 individuals participating weekly since 2020, not only preparing, decorating, and delivering the lunch bags to HoFoCo, but also helping with sorting, counting, coordinating, and distributing them;
- 7 components per lunch bag: sandwich, fruit, protein bar, napkin, beverage, sweet, and chips
- Hundreds of original hand-drawn or printed decorated bags (scroll down to see some of the incredible artwork);
- 4 schools periodically preparing additional lunch bags;
- 3 counties served (Los Angeles, Orange, Ventura);
- Average of 25 recipient organizations per week;
- Not a single Sunday missed!
We are so incredibly grateful for all the individuals, families, students, parents, teachers, volunteers, drivers, coordinators, and staff that make this possible!
A special thank you to Bonita Friedericy who has spearheaded the work on the HoFoCo side since the very beginning, and our staff member Dougald Park who supports her, and to Jennifer Levin and Helen Eigenberg from HODG for their continued support and advocacy.
We are thrilled to celebrate the three-year anniversary of the Sunday Lunch Bag Program! Please consider making a donation today to Hollywood Food Coalition. Funds raised will go to support HoFoCo's efforts to end food insecurity and food waste, and alleviate poverty in Los Angeles.
Hollywood Food Coalition is an organization dedicated to addressing food insecurity, eliminating food waste and helping our guests connect to essential services by building trust and community. Since 1987 we have provided hunger relief to unhoused and low-income neighbors through hot, healthy meals served every single night of the year, without fail. Since then, we have grown into a thriving meal service and food rescue operation providing meals and other basic necessities to food-insecure Angelenos, according to HoFoCo’s ethos of Responsiveness, Consistency, Choice and Community.
We help more unhoused community members on a daily basis than any other social service agency in the neighborhood.
When we share food we not only help with basic needs, but we also remind our guests of their fundamental humanity. We remind them that they are not forgotten, that somebody cares, and that they are still worthwhile members of the human family.
At our core, we actively seek to construct a more cohesive, just, and compassionate community. We serve any hungry person who walks through our door, with no exclusionary intake or prohibitive requirements that would turn them away.