FARSB Celebrates 1st Anniversary for Hunger Resource Center!

Friday, June 6th, 2025

Photo Credits: FARSB

One year ago marked a major milestone for FARSB with the grand opening of the new Hunger Resource Center on Trail Creek Rd. in Riverside, California. This acquisition proved to be a much-needed expansion of services with the addition of the SNAP Resource Center, the Learning Center, and the Fresh Start Pantry by Goodman.

As we look back at the 1st anniversary of the FARSB Hunger Resource Center being open, we want to mark this special occasion by highlighting the difference that it's made in the IE community during 2024, and so far in 2025. Let's take a look at the major victories that this expansion allowed for our food bank.

SNAP (CalFresh) Resource Center

CalFresh Training Attendees.

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is a federal food assistance program, known as CalFresh in the state of California. The CalFresh Resource Center was designed to assist individuals applying for CalFresh monthly benefits and help applicants navigate and understand the eligibility requirements.

Within its opening year of operation, the CalFresh Resource Center enabled our team to assist over 1,400 households with eligibility requirements and online applications! With the help of our CalFresh Outreach team and numerous interns, this addition to the services FARSB provides has been hugely successful for our community and for our hunger-relief efforts.

Learning Center

FARSB's Learning Center was created to ensure there was ample meeting space for workshops, professional development courses, and tabling space for additional resources for clients receiving food assistance. Even with that already long list of items, this room has served as much more than expected.

Mayor Lock Dawson and Josh Fryday, during a listening session, at the FARSB Hunger Resource Center for CA Volunteers.

During the first year of being open, the Learning Center hosted multiple sessions of The Goodness in Food (TGIF) - our child nutrition course, resource tabling events featuring other nonprofit organizations for community services, and most recently a listening session for California Volunteers from the Office of Governor Newsom that included Chief Service Officer, Josh Fryday, and City of Riverside, Mayor Patricia Lock Dawson (pictured, left).

FARSB also partners with the Riverside Free Clinic through our Feeding Through Healthcare pillar, which encompasses our FoodRx program and the client-choice pantry, which hosted a cooking demonstration for pantry clients. This demonstration showed clients an efficient way to cook the given ingredients from the pantry to make complete, delicious meals.

Fresh Start Pantry by Goodman

One of the most exciting additions to the resource center is the Fresh Start Pantry by Goodman. This client-choice food pantry model allows community members to shop for their items just like at a grocery store, at no cost to them.

Volunteer Lead, Cheryl Tavaglione, stocking the pantry.

Referred individuals are sent to our resource center by our healthcare partners, who screen patients at their facilities for food insecurity and determine if they are in immediate need of food assistance.

Once referred, shoppers can make an online shopping appointment once a month for three months. During this time, our staff works with them to ensure they apply for CalFresh benefits, are connected to another FARSB food distribution, or receive employment resources to help stabilize their financial situation.

Throughout the year, the pantry saw an average of 200 clients per month shop at the location, with dozens of households receiving assistance with CalFresh and no longer needing to utilize the pantry for their nutritional needs.

Warehouse - Special Projects

Volunteers packing Grab n' Go boxes at the new Trail Creek Warehouse space.

The final draw of the new building was the small warehouse space that could be utilized for storage and smaller volunteer shifts. Though the warehouse is much smaller than the main distribution warehouse in Riverside, where the food donations are received and sorted, this space was used for several special projects throughout the year as an additional volunteer opportunity.

There were several packing events where corporate groups came together to pack food boxes, along with individual sign-ups to prepare boxes for our Grab n' Go program inside our Feeding the Youth Pillar. Volunteers packed hundreds of boxes for community members in need through these special projects in the warehouse.

Wrap-Up

Acquiring this new building was an astronomical step for FARSB, and the past year has only shown that the expansion was needed to meet the growing needs of our Riverside and San Bernardino neighbors. This new addition has made this year one of new growth, in multiple ways, and now serves as a place that will sustain that growth to continually meet our neighbors' needs in the years to come.

We love the IE, and we want to ensure that everyone has access to the nutritional food they deserve. Through initiatives like the purchase of this new building, FARSB can feed the IE more efficiently and effectively, to alleviate hunger!

If you'd like to support FARSB's programs and initiatives, please visit: FeedingAmericaIE.org/givefunds to donate to our mission, or FeedingAmericaIE.org/givetime to register for a volunteer shift.