Dear friend,

Cecilia Estraviz, Operations Manager for Lift UP, is always looking for ways to serve more neighbors. Lift UP provides food security services to 50 affordable buildings in Downtown and NW Portland. In 30 of these buildings, we have dedicated funding to “Adopt” the building, enabling us to offer our full suite of food security services: Delivered Food Boxes, Emergency Food Closets, and Supper Club (a 4-part cooking education series). 

Most on-site pantries consist of dry goods and lack the ability to store perishables such as dairy, eggs, and fresh produce. Feedback from our neighbors emphasized that increased access to these items was highly desired, as they are often unaffordable due to fixed incomes and decreased SNAP benefits. 

Over the past six months, during our trial run of this new program, we hosted 15 pop-up pantries in six buildings, serving 432 people and distributing nearly 5,000 pounds of perishable food. The pop-up pantries were very well received. 

The synopsis from Rose Schnitzer's Resident Advocate sums up the success of the program below.  

"The Pop-Up Pantry was amazing and very well received. It addressed the nutritional needs of our population, which consists mostly of older adults from diverse ethnic backgrounds. The residents were very enthusiastic about the eggs, milk, apples, and other produce items, which were greatly appreciated. As someone once told me, 'Food is medicine,' and this initiative not only addressed food insecurity but also alleviated the anxiety about affording items that many take for granted. Days later, people continued to thank me for this opportunity and are looking forward to the next one. There are so many levels of gratitude and need—a virtual prism of social determinants of health encapsulated in food." 

Cecilia is thrilled with the success and efficiency of the pop-up pantries and looks forward to growing this new program. "Meeting neighbors where they are is the goal. Creating more accessible food distribution systems with resident support allows us to better serve and expand our services in new, exciting ways. We are also able to connect with new community members and have a larger reach" she said.  

We are grateful to all our Adopt partners, listed here, who help make these new initiatives possible for our neighbors. Because of these partners, we can provide the necessary food security services to nourish our neighbors in affordable housing in Downtown and NW Portland. Special thanks to our new Adopt partner, Care Oregon, for their recent grant of $25,000 to support our Adopt a Building Program and Metro for their generous grant of $75,000 over the next two years, which will support our Pop-up pilot programs. 

Interested in how you or your organization can Adopt a Building or support our Adopt program? Learn more here. 

We are grateful for all our partners who make our work possible. Thank you! 

With Gratitude,

Stephanie Barr, Executive Director 

Food brings us together.