The Angel Food project is a small, mobile food pantry that helps local families/individuals with healthy groceries, and delivers thoughtfully packed bag lunches and snacks to schools, injured veterans, seniors, and the disenfranchised. With heart.

Meet Jenn Holden on NBC Bay Area News

Most Fridays, since 2011, thanks to a supportive husband, friends, family and neighbors, I have been able to combine my many years of social work experience, with a love of food and service, to create an uplifting and dignified way to help those in our community who don’t get enough good food to eat, and may be marginalized by challenges that can be softened by this simple, but impactful act of kindness.

A longtime Woodside resident, but native San Franciscan who experienced hunger as a child, I am sensitive to the plight of the less fortunate among us, and those struggling to make ends meet. Many of these people are the housekeepers, kids and service people we see everyday. It feels that to look away, when we have so much, is like looking away from ourselves.

My current projects include:

• Providing ten families a week at Fair Oaks Elementary School with hearty and healthy weekend groceries, along with 2-5 emergency food boxes delivered to moms who contact me by phone. My Friday delivery day ensures that more than 60 kids won’t go hungry over the weekend when school meals aren’t available. It can also mean the difference between a family being able to pay rent or buy food. Impactful. We have also served families at Taft, Hoover, and John Gill Elementary Schools. I currently rotate schools and families based on need and resources available.
• Maintaining a snack box in the School Office for teachers to give to kids who they know are coming in hungry. Food=focus. And love.
• Delivering 5-8 special bags lunches weekly to Veterans in the Polytrauma unit at the VA Hospital in Palo Alto. All have suffered severe injures, and the lunches are designed to brighten their taste buds, and their day. Grateful.
• Always making a few extra lunches for the disenfranchised that I see on my Friday travels.
• Delivering lunch bags to kids in low income apartment buildings in East Palo Alto and Redwood City during the summer and some holidays.

What your donations are used for:

Currently, 100% of donations to this fund go directly to food and supplies.

• $30-35=family bag
• $10=lunch bag
• $2=snack bags

No salaries or overhead are paid. (Except $100/mo. for space in a licensed commercial kitchen in Redwood City.) I would like to secure funding to double the number of people I currently serve each week, (50-60) and hire two women from the community to work in the pantry while their children are in school. Enabling THEM to become the givers, and feed their families independently.

How you can help:

While monetary donations are most helpful, and allow us to widen our reach, putting more fresh produce and protein in each bag, there are opportunities to decorate bags, collect food and occasionally help in the pantry.

Please contact me for a wish list of most needed items, or any questions.

Why this fund is important:

Personally, this work has filled a place in my own heart, just as it has filled tummies. As a community, I think it’s important to not only beautify our immediate surroundings, but to cultivate a culture of kindness and generosity that radiates out into the world. Or at least, right down the road. There may be other, larger programs that feed thousands of people every day, but this one is personal, and it showcases the good side of Woodside in a way that makes us all shine.

Contact information:

Jennifer Holden

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