Keystone Community Services is a nonprofit organization that provides high-quality social services in the community and in neighborhood gathering places to support and strengthen individuals, families and communities. Keystone has seven sites throughout the St. Paul area and serves more than 25,000 people through basic needs services, senior services and youth services.
Keystone’s mission is to strengthen the capacity of individuals and families to improve their quality of life. Our Basic Needs program mission is to make sure that every person in St. Paul has access to healthy food so they can have good health and a hopeful future.
In Keystone’s Basic Needs program, over 7,000 individuals per month are served and that number is continuing to grow. Faced with increasing requests for assistance, Keystone has grappled with how to keep up with the demand for food—and more importantly, how to help clients move beyond food shelf dependence to greater self-reliance.
Though we are able to serve many people and give them access to the food they need, we know we still can’t reach everyone in need of healthy food with traditional services. For example, there are neighborhoods in our community with families in need of food assistance but with limited access to the food they need. For over 50% of our clients, transportation is a barrier to receiving emergency food and other essential services. Forty-two percent of our food shelf users are disabled or care giving for a disabled loved one. Healthy food gives these folks who are facing a lot of stressful challenges on a very limited income the strength to carry on day to day. It’s hard for them to physically get to us. That’s why we go to them. We launched our Foodmobile program in 2015 to provide access to food for neighborhoods where transportation to one of our food shelf sites is a barrier. The Foodmobile is an awesome “food shelf on wheels” that travels all over Ramsey County to reach folks who can’t get to a regular food shelf. It has healthy refrigerated and frozen options as well as pantry foods, and everyone can choose the foods they need.
When you see our Foodmobile on the road, give us a wave! If you are interested in learning more about the Foodmobile or volunteering in this unique way visit us online at www.keystoneservices.org or call us at 651-645-0349.