The Bell Gardens Family Community Service Center, accompanied by the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank, hosted a free food distribution for their city and surrounding communities on Saturday, March 18.

The food distribution began at 8:30 a.m. and was held at the recreation parking lot in Veterans Park only until supplies lasted.

Many of the Bell Gardens residents and outside communities showed up that supplies only lasted for approximately 2 hours.

After getting checked in, the recipients are to go through the directed paths to each table, which takes about roughly 10 minutes.

The LA Food Banks distributed to the recipient protein, which was chicken this time but can vary to tuna, fruits, canned/boxed goods and toiletries such as menstrual products and diapers.

Kimberly Chi, event organizer and Bell Gardens recreation lead, has hosted this same event in the past to help her community.

“We started the food distribution program back when covid started in 2020 so we’ve been doing this for 3 years now,” Chi said.

When the program first started, the Family Service Center and LA Food Banks would host the events occasionally on upcoming holidays.

The movement and donations got bigger and they were able to start distributing every 3rd Saturday of every month.

Despite the pandemic, both of the organizations saw that neighboring communities were lacking in support and devoted their time to making these distributions happen.

“I know whether we have the pandemic or not there’s a lot of people that are in need,” said Chi, “I think it’s such a big help to the surrounding cities and our city as well.”

Not only does it take the Bell Gardens center to use their entire staff of leads to make it possible, but as well as all of the people and major contributors who donate — it takes a village to make this possible.

The mission is always to help those low-income individuals and families with children and other individuals in need who can’t get any other resources; to make a difference in our neglected neighborhoods.

LA Food Bank has partnered up with a variety of corporations to start fundraising campaigns.

They have a friendly competition between firms to see who can raise the most money for the Food Bank. The campaigns included components of volunteering, food drives and raising money.

Even so, you don’t have to be in a corporation to be able to help because, for every dollar donated, the Food Bank is able to get 4 meals.

So if anyone is interested in donating or simply volunteering, check out the LA Food Banks website and the Bell Gardens Recreation website.

In order to become a recipient without being a Bell Gardens resident, the staff on site will ask for your zip code as well as your income due to the guidelines.

However, you do NOT need to show proof of income.

The Bell Gardens Family Community Service Center will continue to partner up with the LA Food Banks organization every month with its next event scheduled for April 8 from 8:30 a.m. to 10:30 a.m.