Sacramento group provides boxed lunches for low-income, elderly Asians, Pacific Islanders

On a bright, clear Friday morning, the Chinese American Council of Sacramento gathered at Happy Garden Restaurant to hand out 400 boxed lunches for low-income and elderly Asian American and Pacific Islander residents.

The foam boxes, filled to the brim with chow mein, beef with broccoli and fried chicken, were distributed to seven different AAPI community organizations. The lunch giveaway is a replacement for what’s normally the biggest CACS community fundraiser of the year, the Gold Mountain Celebration Dinner, which for decades has drawn hundreds of AAPI community leaders together.

But with large gatherings banned due to the COVID-19 pandemic, CACS organizers decided to pivot and expand their community outreach through free boxed lunches for low-income and elderly AAPI residents.

“We wanted to make sure the community knew that we were still functioning,” said Karun Yee, a member of the CACS Foundation and one of the boxed lunches organizers. “We wanted to let people know that we are alive and operating.”

The restaurant was bustling Friday morning morning with CACS organizers piling boxes on carts and rolling them out to organizers waiting in their cars. Leaders from the Sacramento Chinese Community Service Center, Hui o’ Hawaii of Sacramento, The To’utupu’o e ‘Otu Felenite Association, My Sister’s House, St. John’s Shelter for Women and Children, Hmong Youth and Parents United and Iu Mien Community Services were each given a 45-minute window to arrive and load up.

Each organization was responsible for distributing the food as they saw fit. Mona Foster, founder of Hui o’ Hawaii of Sacramento, said she would set up camp in Bowling Green Park to hand out meals to Marshallese seniors, with any leftovers delivered directly to their homes.

Kevin Thai, SCCSC deputy director, rolled up with two small cars, which were used to deliver the lunches directly to three Sacramento elementary school cafeterias. Low-income families in the area - specifically, those whose children rely on school-provided lunches - were all notified to arrive if they wanted to pick up one of the free lunches.

The elementary school students will be happy, Thai said, since they don’t get Chinese food as part of their school-sponsored meals, but their older family members are also excited as well.

“For a lot of our folks, being able to get a good meal like this is out of their budget,” Thai said.

In a pandemic that’s been particularly difficult for low-income and elderly people of color, CACS organizers said that they hoped the lunches could alleviate some of the strain and remind AAPI residents that their community organizations are still there for them, working to fill in gaps in support where they can.

“Our goal in this particular event is to outreach to the underserved in our community, Asian groups that are forgotten by the rest of the community,” said Alex Eng, CACS president. “We hope to have more of these events in the future too.”

“It’s just a nice community gesture to people who might not expect anything … a way to make it simple for the community to know that we’re still around,” Yee said.