Food and Charity : Loaves and Fishes: Feeding the Masses

It’s a mild December morning when I arrive at Loaves and Fishes Community Service Center, located behind a NAPA auto parts store on Delano Street in Van Nuys. Outside, half a dozen homeless men sit in a circle on the ground and eat lunch together, pulling sandwiches, soft drinks and hard-boiled eggs from the plastic sacks they recently received from volunteers. I pause at the front door as two mothers, laden with full shopping bags, herd a brood of young children out into the parking lot. Inside, the waiting room is full of clients: the homeless and those on low fixed incomes who have come to rely on this particular arm of Catholic Charities as one source of their food and clothing.

Volunteer coordinator Barbara Osbourne, an energetic woman with lively eyes and a firm handshake, greets me warmly.

“We’re busy today!” she exclaims proudly, and takes me back to her office.

Briefly, she explains how this efficient and busy organization works. After a brief interview to determine need, Loaves and Fishes provides clients with food, clothing, diapers, toiletries and, this time of year, toys, depending on what is available. The food distributed here comes from a variety of sources: the L.A. Regional Foodbank delivers non-perishable groceries every Friday at a nominal cost of 11 cents a pound. Three area Catholic churches (Our Lady of Grace, St. Francis de Salles and St. Genevieve) conduct monthly food and clothing drives. B’nai Brith, Temple Judea, Bel Air Presbyterian, and local food and bread stores also help stock the shelves. A toy drive is presently in progress for Christmas.

More than 40 volunteers staff Loaves and Fishes in quite a variety of capacities. Osbourne herself started out as a volunteer worker in the food pantry. When funds were cut, eliminating the paid director, Barbara stepped in at no pay. “I’m a golfer!” cries Barbara. “All I ever wanted to do was hit golf balls. Yet here I am, two days a week.”

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As soon as I have a rudimentary sense of the process, Osbourne takes me to the food pantry. Two high school boys from the sophomore class at Crespi, a Carmelite high school, are “making bags”--putting paper sacks in plastic sacks. A long-haired community service worker in a tie-dye T-shirt, who was sent from the courts to work off a traffic violation, is stocking the shelves. Helen, one of Osbourne’s golfing buddies, and her friend Anna, are filling food orders, while another woman, whose name I don’t catch, is in a back room unpacking and sorting food collected from churches. Yet another woman comes in with sandwiches she’s assembled at home from food room supplies.

At first, I’m put to work filling food orders, which are little slips of paper that indicate if the client is a homeless individual or a family of X number of members. Because he or she will have no facilities for preparing food, a homeless person receives a bag of ready-to-eat items: two sandwiches, sweets, fresh fruit, pop top cans of meat or stew, a bag of pretzels, crackers, two hard-boiled eggs, a soda and whatever else is available.

Families, according to size, receive a specified number of grocery items: rice, pasta, canned vegetables, beans, soups, fruit, loaves of bread, butter. There’s a shelf of extras too--items from church food drives that include such things as salad dressing, Hamburger Helper, pickle relish. Food items cross virtually all major ethnic lines; there’s ravioli, refried beans, ramen noodles, hot dog buns and matzo.

The amount of food given to any person or family is enough for several days. Yet homeless clients may only come every 15 days; the families can come only every 60 days. Even so, Loaves and Fishes serves between 3,000 to 3,500 homeless individuals and families a month.

At noon, Helen and Anna go home, and I find myself stationed at the counter, taking orders, handing them over to be filled. When the bags are full, I hand them over to the clients, a transaction presided over by a sketch of Dorothy Day, the journalist who started the Catholic Worker newspaper, soup kitchen and shelters. I hand food to homeless men bronzed from exposure, to women holding infants.

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Most clients take their food with a simple thank you. A few have special requests. One man asks to exchange a box of matzo meal for another box of macaroni and cheese: We try to explain the macaroni is essentially a rationed item, one per customer, while the matzo meal is an extra. He shrugs and leaves the matzo meal for someone who knows how to use it. A young couple expecting their first child are homeless, but they do have cooking facilities--a camp stove in their car, perhaps, or a hot plate in a motel room. They request groceries, but they’re also hungry right now; sandwiches and baby wipes are added to their bag. After I hand a sack of groceries to an older gentleman named Vicente, he takes my hand, looks me in the eye, and blesses me.

When the place clears out around one o’clock, I sling my purse over my shoulder and head out to my car, feeling, well, exactly that: blessed.

Loaves and Fishes Community Service Center, 14525 Delano St., Van Nuys, (818) 997-0943. Donations accepted Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. Imperishable food items, clothing.

Special needs: baby diapers, men’s clothing and shoes, blankets and TOYS, TOYS, TOYS. Cash donations are always welcome.