“We’ve been an emergency assistance agency for 50 years, but we’ve never seen anything like this,” says Marie Bernard, executive director of Sunnyvale Community Services. “Since the shelter-in-place order, families are coming to us who have lost their jobs, who have to stay home to take care of their children—many reasons why they can’t afford enough food right now. We’ve stepped up to provide food to more families than ever.”

March 17 of this year brought many sudden changes to Santa Clara County. Even though Sunnyvale Community Services (SCS) was allowed to stay open as an essential business, some of its staff members and many of its volunteers were in high-risk groups and had to shelter at home.

Despite those challenges, SCS ran its scheduled monthly food distribution the very next day, with the remaining volunteers and staff members teaming up to make sure that 786 low-income Sunnyvale families got the food they needed.

Soon, however, SCS’s weekly produce distribution had to be put on hold for a few weeks when the shelter-in-place order took effect. Still, with the help of California National Guard members boxing food at the Second Harvest of Silicon Valley’s warehouse, SCS could resume handing out fresh fruits and vegetables twice a month.

Six months later, SCS continues to carry out its mission of preventing homelessness and hunger—not only with monthly onsite food distributions, but also grocery and meal deliveries to homebound seniors and disabled persons.

They recently completed this year’s Children’s Summer Nutrition Program that provided extra “kid-friendly” foods to families while school was out, and they’re now gearing up to provide special foods and gift cards for the holidays.

This week’s #SiliconValleyStrongHeroes is one of seven Emergency Assistance Network agencies that together provide safety-net services throughout Santa Clara County. 2020 marks SCS’s 50th anniversary, and while they haven’t been able to celebrate that milestone quite the way they planned, during the COVID-19 pandemic, they have more than demonstrated why the City of Sunnyvale recently named them Business of the Year.

If you’re a Sunnyvale resident in need of food assistance, you can contact Sunnyvale Community Services at 408-738-4321 or info@svcommunityservices.org. For more information, go to https://www.svcommunityservices.org.