Community Action Services celebrates 58 years of providing vital resources, aims to build on outreach efforts
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- Donations received through the statewide Feed Utah food drive are pictured March 25, 2025.
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- Residents and community members attend Community Action Services and Food Bank’s 58th birthday bash Saturday, May 17, 2025.
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- A group poses for a photo during Community Action Services and Food Bank’s 58th birthday bash Saturday, May 17, 2025.
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- Children play on a bounce house slide during Community Action Services and Food Bank’s 58th birthday bash Saturday, May 17, 2025.
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- Volunteers work inside the food pantry at Community Action Services and Food Bank on Tuesday, March 25, 2025.
For nearly six decades, Community Action Services and Food Bank has prided itself on providing a lifeline to people battling poverty.
The organization, serving residents in Utah, Wasatch and Summit counties, focuses on self-reliance and offers resources including food, financial support and helping people out of homelessness.
On May 17, Community Action Services celebrated its 58th anniversary at its Provo location. Jessica Miller, chief impact officer, said the event was a testament to the organization’s mission to address hunger and homelessness.
It was also another way to boost outreach efforts in the community.
“We find that we talk with people in the community and they aren’t aware of us,” Miller said. “And so this birthday party was another way that we wanted to give back to the community and also to provide them with an opportunity to learn more about what we do.”
Many people are familiar with the organization’s food pantry, but Community Action Services does much more.
The organization aids citizens by providing rent and utility assistance to help prevent evictions. It also helps with security deposits and application fees to help families experiencing homelessness get back into housing or help families facing eviction move into more affordable housing. Later this year, Community Action Services plans to open numerous deeply affordable housing units, and some transitional housing units for families with children.
It also offers financial literacy programs and various educational resources through the Circles Utah Valley program to help guide community members into self-sustainment..
Miller said the birthday bash yielded a bevy of referrals who the organization looks to follow up with to determine what programs may be the best fit for them.
“It’s really an ongoing effort where we are getting our message out and finding and recruiting those that are good candidates so that they can get the support through education and coaching to increase their income to 200% of the federal poverty level,” Miller explained.
However, food insecurity remains a concern for many residents in Utah County and the need is apparent through the amount of people seeking assistance from Community Action Services, according to Miller.
In the third quarter of 2024, the Provo-Orem metropolitan area ranked among the highest cities in the nation for home foreclosures, according to real estate data compiled by ATTOM.
Miller believes homeowners may still be feeling the pressure of trying to keep a roof over their families head.
“If you’re having trouble paying your mortgage, you can have trouble putting food on the table,” she said.
In 2023, the organization reported a 155% increase in usage across each of its food pantries. As the issue persists, Miller said it’s not only those in poverty feeling the pinch.
“More than 95,000 people in our community are experiencing food insecurity, and 65% of those have incomes above the SNAP (benefits) eligibility threshold,” she told the Daily Herald. “So it’s impacting more than just those that are in poverty, and it makes the services that we provide here even more critical in helping our neighbors.”
Miller notes another factor potentially holding undocumented immigrants back from seeking out their services is the fear of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the risk of deportation.
“But that’s even makes our outreach even more important, because I think if we have a growing population of people who traditionally haven’t needed these services. They don’t know about them,” she said.
In March, Community Action Services spoke with the Daily Herald, voicing its concerns of possible federal funding cuts after President Donald Trump vowed earlier this year to limit government spending.
Seventy-five percent of Community Action Services’ funding comes from the federal government and potential cuts would yield significant impacts, including the elimination of several programs currently being offered.
Miller said it’s still unclear which funding may go away but the need for local community support and its programs remain vital even despite potential future changes.
“We’re grateful for the support that we get from the community, whether that’s through food donations, monetary donations, volunteer time. All of those things are critical to what we do here, even more so now in the kind of climate that we’re in, both politically and economically,” Miller said. “We just want to encourage and welcome any who may not have helped in the past, but are willing to do so in the future.”
