Hi! This is Rafa! I’m reaching out again asking for support. The Altadena Farmers’ Market has been providing free produce to the community for 17 months. Our voucher program is completing a year. And we just recently secured a new sponsor who will allow us to continue our free produce distributions until December. We’re also working in new projects to support our community’s long term recovery. However we’re out of money for payroll. Our staff, including myself were deeply affected by the fire. I’m a full time employee of the organization. I used to be the owner when the AFM was still a for profit. But I gave up on that so that as a nonprofit we could have a bigger impact in the community. We continue to apply for grants and funding, we have been successful getting funding for produce purchases to giveaway, but not much luck in getting funding for other costs like insurance, general operating expenses and specially payroll. Just in the last few weeks we’ve applied for 9 grants. Large, small, state wide and hyper local grant opportunities, but we haven’t gotten any. Specially when it comes to local grants, this constant “no” for an answer makes me feel like the work we do is invisible for those who have the funding and the tools to help us.

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