FIND Food Bank Staff Serve with a Purpose, Giving Back to their Hometown
New staff joins FIND to fight a hunger crisis that hits particularly close to home. Several team members returned to the desert after college to help relieve hunger in their communities.
Xiomara Meza
Development Administrator
Coachella Valley High School
Cal State San Bernardino, Class of 2020
Bachelors in Psychology, Minor in Criminal Justice
What is your connection to the Coachella Valley?Â
Well, I’ve lived here my whole life. I love living here because of the people and the community. I like the scenery of the mountains, the agriculture, and the farms. The people here are also so welcoming to one another.
What is your role at FIND?Â
I am the Development Administrator. I deal with all the donations that come in and input them into our database. I send all the thank you letters and help with events.
How do you feel you’re helping your community?Â
I live on the Eastside in Coachella. I get to see more of the clients that come here, and it’s nice being able to work here and let them know about the resources we offer. I tell them, “You can go this day, and this is the calendar of events. Since I’m working here, I get to reach more people where I live in my neighborhood.
Why do you love what you do at FIND Food Bank? Â
I’ve always wanted a job where I get to help others. That’s why I like it. Before FIND, I worked with kids. I would do ABA (Applied Behavior Analysis) tutoring with kids on the spectrum, so it was helping in a different way. It’s nice being able to do different things that serve others in need of help. It makes me sad to see others that need help and feeling like I can’t do much to help them. This is the least I can do to help others. There are so many people that need help, and you don’t get to help everyone.
Kyler Desphande
Community Impact Coordinator
Colorado College
Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science
What is your connection to the Coachella Valley?
I moved here, right before I started kindergarten, and grew up in Rancho Mirage. I went to Palm Valley High School.
What is your role at the food bank?
Mainly I do data analysis. The CalFresh Outreach team sends the number of people we saw at distribution, and I break it down by ethnicity, age, and income, and then put that all into the system so we know where our money is going. Then it applies to grant proposals to make sure we hit all the criteria. It’s making sure that those grants get filled and therefore we get the money. For the community, based on the numbers, we devote some amount of food to different areas, like send more to La Quinta and less in India, those types of roles.
How do you feel you’re helping your community?
For FIND Food Bank, it’s making sure that those grants get filled and therefore we get the money. For the community, based on the numbers, we devote some amount of food to different areas, like sending more to La Quinta and less to Indio, those types of roles.
You really notice when you go out to do the distributions which I help out when they need an extra hand and I am less busy here. That’s when you really get to see the impact when you’re not just staring at a computer screen all day.
I college, I did internships for congresspeople and political campaigning. This is much more in the weeds versus the larger scale like bill construction and advocating. I interned for the congressman here. I was doing lots of office work and then occasionally press junkets. This is more interactive. Most of the stuff I did was separated from the actual people versus this is very person to person.
Why do you love what you do at FIND Food Bank?
I’ve enjoyed it. I really like that there are actually names and faces to this work versus just random numbers on a screen. I’ve learned more about the direct disparity in resources geographically. I did one of those homebound deliveries and two neighbors down the street had like two Mercedes in their driveway and the other person was food insecure less than a block away. I like how much of an impact it makes on the people that are here. Considering I know the amount of people that we help, without FIND Food Bank there would be way too many people who would go hungry.