Student nonprofit facilitates food delivery to at-risk populations

Though exacerbated by the pandemic, food insecurity has always been an issue in the United States. According to NPR, approximately 13.7 million households experienced food insecurity at some point during 2019. Increasing access to food was especially important for USC alumna Ashton Tu since her grandfather, a refugee from China, accredited a nearby church’s food pantry as a lifeline during difficult times. It gave him hope for the future.

However, most nonprofit organizations formed in response to the issue of food insecurity were centered around reducing food waste instead of increasing food distribution. To combat this growing problem, Tu, Camille Grandjean, Michel Faliski, Jessica Au, Sahil Kothari and Tatiana Vaz founded Good2Go, a nonprofit that utilizes volunteer drivers to bridge the gap between food pantries and food-insecure individuals. 

Launched in earlyFebruary, Good2Go connects volunteer drivers, who sign up through Google Forms on the organization’s Instagram page, with individuals experiencing food insecurity and populations at risk for the coronavirus who need help receiving food. Currently, Good2Go partners with three food pantries: Community in Schools Los Angeles, Family Health Care Resources and Salvation Army Los Angeles. 

“Good2Go is important [because] we know that there are food pantries, people that are food insecure know there are food pantries. It’s not a lack of food available necessarily; it’s more of a lack of accessibility,” said Grandjean, a senior majoring in biomedical engineering. “There were hour-long lines just to get food, so if you have other things or you can’t stand outside for whatever reason for that long, you couldn’t get food by the nature of like, how it was going on logistically.” 

The group met in a two-semester civil engineering course, “Innovation in Engineering and Design for Global Crises,” taught by professors Brad Cracchiola, David Gerber and Daniel Druhora, which encourages innovation of products, services and technologies with a humanistic approach in response to human needs affected by global crises. The group spent their first semester researching problems worsened or created by the coronavirus and grew more passionate as they learned more about the severity of food insecurity.

“You take this class as far as you want, and we really sat down and decided as a team that we wanted to pursue this, and it wasn’t just a class project for us,” Grandjean said. 

After speaking with local food pantries and organizations, Faliski, a senior majoring in arts, technology and the business of innovation, noticed a three-fold problem between pantries, food insecure individuals and volunteering opportunities. 

Following these interviews, Good2Go began forging partnerships with local food pantries and organizations, which gave them access to the home information and dietary restrictions of each individual signed up at the pantry. Using this information, Good2Go created a system where volunteers could pick up specially constructed bags of food and deliver them to recipients in need. 

Tu said that the class didn’t force them to pursue anything, but discovering a problem that seriously needed a solution inspired them to keep working until their official launch. 

“This is pretty cheesy, but I was talking to one of our professors, and he was saying that this whole class is meant to launch rockets,” Tu said. “Essentially, it’s more like an incubator, and from there, they really want us to take our ideas, run with it and go, [and the professors] provide feedback every single week, so it helps us iterate on our process.” 

In mid March, Good2Go reached the milestone of over 1,000 deliveries, which the team attributed to their professors’ encouragement in helping them improve their organization as a whole. Tu said that when the group’s goal was to complete one delivery in the next month, their professors pushed them to complete it in the next week, which drove the organization’s rapid progress. 

“I received a message from Brad [Cracchiola] last week… he was like, ‘I’m personally so inspired by your team and the progress you’ve made,’” Faliski said. “The reason they’re such great professors in my eyes is because they’re super excited for your highs, and they’re there to celebrate, but they push you to the next step, immediately.” 

Providing USC students with the opportunity to volunteer safely, in a time when volunteering has decreased as a result of health precautions, was the ultimate solution to food pantries’ need for resources, Grandjean said. Tu worked closely with CIS Los Angeles, a mentorship program that initially focused on helping Los Angeles children graduate from high school but shifted to care for low-income family needs on a daily basis—including providing food,and noticed food pantries were struggling to continue because of the lack of volunteers. 

“Food is an important part of helping a child develop and a child’s growth,” Tu said. “So making deliveries is not necessarily just about food insecurity, it’s also about the pantries’ need, and how they need volunteers constantly, to be able to get the food out there.” 

However, because Good2Go depends on consistent volunteering, engaging volunteers to join is a long-term challenge for the team since maintaining high volunteer numbers would allow them to partner with more food pantries and  deliver to more people, Grandjean said. Currently, deliveries are only made on Thursdays and Fridays to Good2Go’s three food pantry partners. Good2Go hopes to eventually partner with recurring corporate volunteer networks or church groups to make more deliveries possible. 

“Anytime someone does a delivery they love it, and most of the time, people come back to do deliveries, but just the first step of getting people interested or getting people engaged is challenging now, and I don’t think that will be less challenging,” Grandjean said. 

To streamline the volunteering process, Good2Go sends an email and a morning text reminder to their volunteers, including photos that show directions to the food pantry, addresses of the apartment buildings or houses to be delivered to and greetings in different languages for food recipients who do not speak English. 

Hannah Cruz, a senior majoring in accounting, said she enjoyed volunteering with Good2Go because of how much of a difference can be made with a short time commitment, since five to 25 deliveries at an apartment complex can be made in an hour and a half. Cruz said that Good2Go made volunteering an “effortless” experience because of how much helpful information they provided.

“The first woman I delivered to didn’t speak any English, so at first I was panicked because I was like, ‘I don’t know Spanish,’” Cruz said. “Then, I remembered that Good2Go sent me an information sheet of things to say in Spanish, and it was perfect and made the situation so much easier. She knew exactly what I was there for and what I was doing and she got her food.” 

Though the experience is contactless to maintain safety, delivering food is still rewarding to Cruz.

“It’s definitely kind of like that instant gratification that so many of us are looking for in today’s society,” Cruz said. “You get to perform the action and instantly see the benefits that it’s providing. So it’s nice to know that this delivery that was handcrafted by these great organizations are then being handed over to this person’s door, and this might be the only delivery they get for the week … makes you think about things on a much deeper level.” 

Every time Faliski makes deliveries from Family Healthcare Resources on Fridays, she said seeing the people she’s bringing food to makes the experience much more memorable. 

“When I go to that specific location on Friday, there’s like four or five people that always are just like outside their door waiting for delivery, and the smile on their face and the gratitude that they have for us helping them get the food to their door… just reminds you every week how important what we’re doing is to people,” Faliski said. “The fact that we can help them spread that [feeling] to other [volunteers] is really special for sure.”