Skagit County Community Action Agency SCCAA, is the Community Action Program for Skagit County. Community Action Agencies (CAA) are local private and public non-profit organizations that carry out the Community Action Program (CAP), which was founded by the 1964 Economic Opportunity Act to fight poverty by empowering the poor in the United States and its territories, as part of the War on Poverty.
Community Action has a Food Access Department which runs several food programs. These programs include:
Mobile Food Express
This program delivers food to the elderly and disabled who are home bound and unable to make it to the food bank. Food for this program is prepared by food banks in the county
Basic Food Outreach
Community Action is able to fill out the paperwork to sign people up for basic food (e.g. food stamps). This program does outreach in order to contact those eligible for the program.
Harvest for Hope
This is the gleaning program for Skagit County, which harvests produce from local growers. The program was initially started in the winter of 2010 and successfully continued in 2013.
Skagit Food Share Alliance
This program utilizes money raised from the community to purchase food from local growers for local food banks and to support small farms.
Victory Gardens
This program encourages local gardeners to grow extra produce for their local food banks and to donate their excess produce directly to local food banks. It was established in 2009-2010 and continued to attract participation in 2013.
Skagit Food Distribution Center
This is a warehouse facility with dry storage, cooler, and freezer. This site acts as a centralized location for large shipments of food that are delivered from Food Lifeline and Northwest Harvest, government commodities and food drives. Every week, all 14 food banks in Skagit County come to the distribution center to pick up food.
Current Activities
Harvest for Hope was initiated in 2010 as a joint project between Rotary First Harvest, AmeriCorps*VISTA and Community Action of Skagit County. This produce recovery program gleans from local growers, homeowners, and farmers markets. The program focuses on building relationships between local growers and grower organizations in the winter and spring. Through such outreach important relationships are established with the Skagit Valley Food Co-op, the Garden of Hope, Victory Gardens, community gardens, farmers markets, and many large and small farms.
