Khaldoun Allatayfeh
Bear Pantry, a Food Bank partner organization, is a model in the food justice and sustainability movement. Housed in University Village on the U.C. Berkeley campus, the pantry serves about 1,000 students and university service workers.
The pantry not only distributes the Food Bank’s fresh produce, dried goods, and canned food, but they also participate in our food recovery program. Volunteers pick up unsold food from large grocery stores and add it to the supplies from the Food Bank.
Khaldoun Allatayfeh has been a Bear Pantry client, volunteer, and then worker in Bear Pantry’s community garden. “The Food Bank has saved us,” he said. “My wife is a Berkeley graduate student, and we have a four-year-old kid. Sometimes all of the food on our table is from the pantry.”
When the weekly pantry market is over, Khaldoun hauls the used cardboard boxes and leftover food to the community garden where it is composted, coming full circle.
“The garden gathers us. We breathe, get a chance to farm, come with the kids, and enjoy. A lot of the people we’ve met, we’ve met here at the pantry. I grew up in a farming family in Jordan. So when I come here, it brings back so many memories, especially the smells. Being here and giving out food to others is amazing. It’s really paradise for me.”
