Word has it that there was a large refrigerator donated to Anaheim High School that will be filled with food donations. Anaheim High school received this donation from a combination of organizations. One of the main organizations was Waste Not OC; the other donors involved were Lou Correa‘s office and Saddleback Church. 

This container holds up to 25 thousand individually frozen and vacuum-packed meals; averaging out to about $2 per meal. This came about after COVID-19 hit because families found themselves in need of food after many suffered job losses. This forced organizations to come up with ways to provide food for those who needed it the most.

Tanya Garcia is the organization communicator at Anaheim High School and is a part of the food distributions and donations. She explained that every family’s dietary needs are taken into account including food allergies or vegan diets. Tanya Garcia shared,” We do our best to accommodate the majority of dietary needs. Due to the nature of the food recovered sometimes we cannot anticipate all requests” she continued to explain why the bin is not opened at the moment,   “It isn’t open to the public right now, because it is for those emergency situations and it is more for the community not necessarily just Anaheim high school.”

Ms. Garcia explained that the food is not only given to those families who qualify for free and reduced lunch, “The idea is that anybody who might need the meals, once that distribution time comes, can access those meals.” When it comes to how the food is distributed she explains, “ That is something that is up to us when the time comes. To have a distribution window, where students and families can come at different times. The important thing is accessibility and we understand that if we have a certain window of time not everybody can come during this certain window. So we consider that it is accessible to everyone”- she continues, “Since the food is housed at Anaheim High School, we will need to have a food distribution event with these meals but ideally yes, we would like to have it at Anaheim but inviting different AUHSD families.” Anaheim High school is not the only school receiving these food distributions, other schools are also offering drive-through food distributions. “This gives families relief from stress and anxiety from worrying about food,” explained Mr. Saldivar.

September had four drive-through food distributions. There are different boxes of food that contain produce, shelved items, and refrigerated items. To get more information on other resources available for food donations and senior citizens with dates and times for these distributions you can go to www.auhsd.us. To access this information click on students/families for information on food resources and calendars for updates on when and where the distributions will be. For more information on resources and help available in Anaheim High School go to https://anaheimhs.org/. Principal Roberto Saldivar shared a short message to expresses how thankful he is to the community for all those who help organize and bring help to the families in our community, “We feel tremendously blessed and fortunate to have so many people and organizations out there helping during a time like this,” he said.