As a local, small, family-owned company, we are passionate about making our community a better place. Caring about our community starts with employee’s and their families. During 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic flipped our community upside-down. As a business, we were trying to figure out how to stay true to our mission
Connecting our Community with Great Food.
We are so grateful to have over two hundred dedicated employees who were deemed essential and worked in-person throughout the pandemic. We are proud to be a link in the food supply delivery chain and everyday: our trucks delivered food throughout Central California, our buyers procured food from throughout the nation to deliver to local retailers and restaurants, and production and operations employees ensured product was loaded onto trucks.
But, during 2020 our employees were struggling with the challenges of transitioning their children to distance learning at home. As a response to our employees’ needs, JD Food in partnership with Every Neighborhood Partnership(ENP) and New Life Baptist Church launched the Learning Hub. The Learning Hub created a safe place with reliable internet where employee’s kids could complete their distance learning. It’s been a challenging and long year, but we’re thankful and proud of our team and wanted to share with you some of the great things were going on behind the scenes!
The Learning Hub opened in mid-October 2020 and we’re proud to say:
-In a challenging year, kids bonded with staff and each other creating a sweet and supportive community.
-Kids had a safe, supportive and caring environment to complete their distance learning.
-We celebrated milestones and holidays together and had a lot of fun!
-Our partnership with New Life and Pastor Moises is a blessing and look forward to our continued partnership. (He has sent us a few members of the church looking for employment!)
-We’ve have realized how complicated the problems covid has created for kids of our community, especially in the areas of mental and wholistic health.
By the numbers, the Learning Hub served:
- 5 family units in total.
- 3 Clovis Unified Students
- 9 Fresno Unified Students
- 2 students in dual immersion
- 1 high school student
- 2 jr high students
- 7 elementary
- 3 preschool
- 13 total smiles
- 10 total Volunteers
- 2 Staff (ended the year with 1, small but mighty crew)
- 2 Companies that are grateful!
- Hundreds of snacks eaten
- 8 Holiday parties
- End of the Year Party at Blackbeard’s in Fresno that was super fun!
- Countless hours building puzzles and playing 4 square
- 0 Covid spread
- Great partnerships started in South Fresno with Every Neighborhood Partnership and New Life Church
As a company, we wanted to take this opportunity to say thank you to….
ENP and New Life Church for their sense of vision to say YES to make an impact in our employee’s kids lives this year. We are so blessed to work with incredible leaders like Andrew Feil of ENP and Pastor Moises Garcia of Iglesia Bautista Nueva Vida/New Life Baptist Church. If you are interested in learning more about Every Neighborhood Partnership and Iglesia Bautista Nueva Vida/New Life Baptist Church, we linked them throughout the blog.
In reflecting on the year, we are thankful for all of our amazing employees! Every employee showing up to work, made this Learning Hub possible and positively impacted the trajectory of these kids’ and families’ lives! Saying THANK YOU doesn’t seem like enough. Our employee’s are the real MVP’s.