By Lorrie Baumann

Organic Valley and Dr. Bronner’s have teamed up with United Peace Relief and Grassroots Alliance to form the Grassroots Aid Partnership with the goal of bringing natural food producers together in a formal way to provide an ongoing resource to help people who’ve been affected by disasters such as California’s Camp Fire. That fire burned the town of Paradise, California, and killed at least 85 people, including five firefighters, last year and continues to affect survivors who still haven’t found new stable housing.

United Peace Relief is a nonprofit organization that provides volunteers to respond to disasters with humanitarian relief, while Grassroots Alliance is a charity organization dedicated to directing resources to organizations focused on alleviating hunger in the U.S. and in disaster zones throughout the world.

Clovis Siemon is leading the effort on behalf of Organic Valley. While his day job with the company doesn’t involve natural disasters, the company stood behind him when he formed and managed a relief kitchen that fed thousands per day after Hurricane Katrina. Since then, Organic Valley has continued to respond. “I led Organic Valley to disasters, but Organic Valley has kept responding, disaster after disaster, over the last 14 years,” he said.

While his and Organic Valley’s early efforts to provide disaster relief were ad hoc, over the past few years, the company team working on the efforts has gained organizational skills and become part of a network that works with other disaster relief organizations such as the Salvation Army and the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency to fill in the gaps to meet human needs after a disaster. Now they think they’re ready to involve other natural food companies in the effort, Siemon said. “Three years ago, when Organic Valley gave to a disaster, we’d be all alone – it would be us giving directly to one 501(c)3 organization,” he said. “Now we’re bringing a lot more resources to the table…. we felt more comfortable inviting the rest of the industry in because, as a cooperative, we believe in collaboration, and because we felt confident that this is something that we can make work.”

The Grassroots Aid Partnership will continue to work with other organizations, leaving them to take the lead in emergency response but then joining in once the gaps have made themselves felt and then continuing to help for a month or more to help rebuild the affected communities. “We figure out the needs and pitch in,” Siemon said. “We’ve been building kitchens and doing distributions for years. The formation of the Grassroots Aid Partnership is to support those efforts.”

The new organization’s focus – at least for now – is disasters within the U.S., but Siemon expects that the partnership will begin working on an international scale within a few years, since some of the volunteers who are involved with Grassroots Aid Partnership are already also involved in international disaster relief efforts. “We’re trying to start humbly,” Siemon said. “But we’re growing to meet the need.”
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While each disaster presents its own challenges, the human need for safe, healthy food is a constant, and both Organic Valley and Dr. Bronner’s already had resources that they could put to work helping out in an emergency. Organic Valley has shipped dairy products into the Camp Fire area for months to help. “Dr Bronner’s sends sanitation materials. Patagonia Provisions,

Nancy’s Yogurt, Lotus Foods, Clif Bar and others have also committed to sending goods,” Siemon said. Both Dr. Bronner’s and Organic Valley have mobile kitchens that are ordinarily used for event marketing, but in disasters, the companies are sending them out for relief efforts. “Dr. Bronner’s owns a big kitchen that can feed 10,000 people a day,” Siemon said. “They built the kitchen to feed people at Burning Man, but the rest of the year, it does disaster relief on request. Organic Valley has a smaller kitchen that will feed about 1,000 people a day.”

Sanderson Farms has also helped out when refrigeration is needed, he added. “Sanderson Farms has been very active and will often send a semi with chicken in it, and they’ll leave the semi for the disaster to use,” he said. “It’s a great example of how we break down borders. When it comes to disasters, everyone’s in it to give.”

The new organization has gone first to the natural foods industry as it puts together the resources to make this an ongoing effort, Siemon said. “We were well connected there…. In this time of rebuilding, it’s really important to give people the healthiest foods they can have to renourish them…. We are also trying distinctly to find food companies with healthy products, but we’re not picky about whether they’re organic. It just happens that we started with the natural foods sector.”

There’s also room for food retailers to get involved by cross-loading goods or lending refrigerated trucks, Siemon said. “Often we just need a parking lot to set up in,” he said. “We’re big fans of everyone trying to help out.”

For more information, visit the GAP partnership’s website at www.grassrootsaidpartnership.org or email info@grassrootsaidpartnership.org. To sign up to help, email help@grassrootsaidpartnership.org.