Bags of Love

Bags of love started back at the end of March.  The principals at Bayside Elementary and Willow Creek in Marin City and Sausalito reached out about the possibility of feeding 200 families that were low income to start with and had further fallen into despair with the shelter in place and loss of jobs.  These families often ate meals at the schools during the school year and since school had closed found it nearly impossible to access daily food. 

 We quickly put together a Sign-Up Genius and asked people to either buy a complete bag of groceries (we supplied the list), purchase the individual items in bulk or make a monetary donation.  Each week volunteers would drop off their donations on Tuesday morning.  Tuesday afternoon the teachers would bag up all the groceries.  We also got a weekly delivery from the food bank of some fresh fruit, veggies and a meat.  On Wednesday’s families would come to the schools and pick up their two bags of groceries.  On Thursday we would deliver to those families that couldn’t come pick up.  We often find those are the ones that need it the most. 

 Along with the monetary donation from individuals, we wrote grants to various organizations and secured additional funding for the program.  With the money that we raised; we made an agreement with Andy’s Local Market to buy the groceries at cost.  In four weeks, we raised close to $155,000 in food and monetary donations to continue feeding these families till the end of Aug.  We closed down the donation portion at the Marin City location at the end of April and now just use the money to buy in bulk.  We still bag groceries each week and provide two bags of food each Wed to the families.

After shutting down the donation campaign for that location, I found that our volunteers were still looking to donate and help, so we reached out to The Hilarita, The Bradley House, The Farley House and Lower Cecilia to run the same program.  We launched on April 28th and fed 125 families and seniors out of The Ranch in Tiburon.  We again have partnered with the food bank to supply a fresh bag of groceries and with World Wrapps, who supplies them with a warm meal once a week.  Our goal is to feed these families till the end of Aug also.  We need to raise an additional $60,000 in food and monetary donations to reach our goal. 

We would love any help you are able to give!  Help comes in many different forms.  We would love a monetary donation as that helps our long-term goal of feeding till Aug.  We love seeing you each week with a donated bag of groceries.  We couldn’t do it without the many hands that help bag and deliver.  And we need word of mouth!  Please feel free to post our story to your social media, email to your friends and family or send me a list of emails that would like to be included!  Many hands make light work!  If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me at [email redacted] or [phone redacted].