FIND Food Bank puts telethon donations to use at food distribution sites

Thanks to the community, we were able to raise over $400,000 during our 11th annual FIND Food Bank telethon.

“The beauty about telethon is it brings so many people together," FIND president and CEO Debbie Espinosa said. "It gives everybody the opportunity to be able to say that hunger is not acceptable in our community and we’ve had over 1,600 volunteers step up through 2020 in order to make sure that we can continue to be able to distributions like this in partnerships with the people that were donating last night; it takes everyone,” she said.

Already donations raised from the telethon are going back out into the community.

“You can see behind us where that money is going towards,” Espinosa said.

The money goes directly towards food distributions like the one at Agua Caliente Elementary School in Cathedral City.

“It means a lot because it’s so expensive and since they’re cutting hours and stuff from work it helps it does really help,” Teresa Palacious said while waiting in line for food.

FIND serves about 350 families at this distribution site every other week.

FIND distributes food at 150 sites and through 44 mobile markets throughout our desert region.

“I know over the past year with the pandemic this has been a huge need for our families, a lot of families come to rely on this so I’m thankful everyone contributed and that our fantastic support from FIND is able to continue this," principal of Agua Caliente Elementary School Eric Antuna said.

But Espinosa said the work is nowhere near finished.

“The community needs so much support right now still," she said. "We’re not at the levels we were at at the pre-pandemic levels of about 90,000 people we’re still serving about 150,000 people every month,” she added.

You can still donate to FIND Food Bank by visiting https://www.findfoodbank.org/donate/