Nourish Food Pantry

Nourish at CA House is a radical intracommunity food pantry system designed to address food insecurity among university students in the Davis community by providing access to fresh, nutritious, and well-balanced groceries. Prior to the pandemic, CA House provided hot meals to students at our biweekly spiritual programming, but these two meals were not enough to ensure that students had enough to eat throughout the week. In Spring 2019, it was decided that the natural next initiative for our organization was to establish a food pantry system that can meet the needs of the religiously- and culturally-diverse student community while offering a variety of healthy food options. The need for reliable, healthy food sources has only grown during the economic instability caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.  The Nourish Pantry is still open to all MLC residents and the Davis student community. To arrange a pick-up time, contact sara@cahouse.org or call 530-753-2017.

Unlike most pantry systems, Nourish provides an advanced level of personal choice, highly-attenuated to the needs of individual community members. Short term goals of this program are:
• Reducing social barriers to food pantry use by eliminating the registration systems and quantity limits common to other food pantries
• Increasing students’ access to fresh produce through weekly produce pick-up times
• Establishing a low-waste, environmentally-sustainable pantry by implementing a system of bulk staples and reusable containers

We’d like to extend a heartfelt thank you to our community partners who help make the Nourish Pantry possible including the California-Nevada Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church, Yolo Food Bank, and Davis Co-op.