Weekly Drive-Thru Food Pantry/Despensa de Alimentos

NVCS's mission is to empower North Hills and surrounding neighborhood residents to build a vision of their community's future and actively solve local challenges.

NVCS is a BIPOC-led nonprofit that annually serves more than 244,000 people who are at-risk or are experiencing homelessness. NVCS is proud to be the largest single-site food distribution center in the San Fernando Valley while upholding the grassroots approach.

The integrity of NVCS's identity as a local community-based nonprofit is essential to the organization. NVCS treats everyone with dignity, respect, and compassion, regardless of their background or circumstances. NVCS fosters a multi-pronged approach to tackling food, housing, and job insecurity through its programs and services.

The NVCS drive-thru food pantry is the most extensive program at the agency. The once-a-week food pantry, on average, reaches about 5,000 households from 118 zip codes monthly. This program requires the largest number of volunteers as there are many moving parts such as packing the groceries, moving the items from one place to another, distributing the items, consolidating items, helping with the vehicle traffic, and cleaning up. While the pantry was on site pre-COVID, we have since transitioned to a drive-thru model and have become experts in having an efficient system that operates at this large scale. The pantry is an incredible experience by seeing firsthand where the food is going and an excellent opportunity to work as a team with others.