For Desirée Guerrero, Tucson’s south-side community is everything.
While growing up on the south side and attending Desert View High School, she saw firsthand through clubs and classes how you could make a difference when working together.
The sentiment of helping others stuck with her — from her teenage years into adulthood.
“I've had that idea in my head for a very long time — since I was a teenager,” she said. “But it was just something in the back of my head and then once I got a little older, after high school, it still was there. But I just wasn't sure what I wanted to do or how to start it. So, fast forward to 2020, I think it was very clear what I wanted to do, how I wanted to do it and I just threw myself into it.”
In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic struck communities hard, especially those in low-income areas, where food and other necessities were already scarce.
Instead of sitting back and waiting for those resources to come, Guerrero decided to step up for her community. She founded the emergency community aid program South Tucson Community Outreach.
Initially, the program focused on distributing necessities for the pandemic like PPE, hand sanitizer and household supplies like toilet paper and paper towels.
“When we first started, it was just helping people out,” she said. “It wasn't like, ‘This is a community group or this is a nonprofit,’ it was just helping people out. So that's what kind of sparked the idea, like, ‘All right, let's get other people involved. Let's make this a bigger thing. Let's see if anyone else needs help in our community.’ And that's how it turned into a community group.”
Once the peak of the pandemic was over, Guerrero shifted the program’s focus and began distributing free emergency food boxes to south-side families. The food boxes are still the primary focus of the now nonprofit today.
Desiree Guerrero started buying groceries for a few neighbors, which then turned into the organization South Tucson Community Outreach that prepares emergency food boxes.
South Tucson Community Outreach offers one-time, free emergency food boxes for south-side families and individuals within their designated delivery area between 22nd Street and Los Reales Road and Interstate 19 and Kino Parkway/Campbell Avenue. Fill out this form to request a box.
“Our goal has always been to help our community with food assistance, no matter what,” Guerrero said. “So as long as you live within the area we deliver in, you're qualified to get a free food box. We don't ask for personal information, financial information or anything like that. So that's always been the main goal, we just want to remove that red tape and try to make food access easily available to residents in the south side.”
The only thing they will ask is how many people currently reside in your household, just so they can make sure they prepare a box with enough food.
Unlike other resources that typically include just canned goods or shelf-stable food items in their food boxes, South Tucson Community Outreach includes fresh food like vegetables, fruits and eggs.
The organization also modifies the food box to your dietary needs. Have a food allergy? On a tight dietary restriction? Guerrero and volunteers will go to the grocery store and pick up items that fit the needs of the recipient.
Plus, many items in the food boxes include regional foods and ingredients steeped in Tucson culture.
“We put a lot of thought into the boxes and what the community might want to eat, what has good nutrition but also can last a long time,” she said. “And since the beginning, I wanted to make sure that we're packing boxes of items that people want to eat and that they're happy to eat because that's been a lot of the feedback we get from people. One of the things that I always hear is like, ‘Wow, this is stuff I did not expect, I'm grateful for whatever I can get but I thought it was gonna be just like canned food and maybe some expired food and the fact that there's more thought into it ... we are excited to eat this.’
“We're just glad that it's something that can also be enjoyable because asking for help, especially food assistance, sometimes can be scary or daunting and a lot of people can feel embarrassed about it.”
After putting together food boxes, the organization’s volunteers will hand-deliver to the recipient’s house, which Guerrero says helps de-stigmatize asking for food assistance.
'We are a very strong community'
Fifty food boxes were delivered to families around Christmastime in 2020.
Since its start, South Tucson Community Outreach has distributed between 2,000 and 2,500 emergency food boxes — feeding around 1,250 families and 4,500 to 5,000 individuals.
In Pima County, the food insecurity rate for Hispanic/Latino individuals is 18%, according to 2020 data from Feeding America. The overall food insecurity rate for Pima County is 12.6%.
Much of South Tucson Community Outreach’s food is donated or purchased through monetary donations made to the organization. Initially, the goods were stored in a storage unit until Guerrero met Jennifer Parlin, the assistant agent at the University of Arizona’s Garden Kitchen.
“Our kitchen, unfortunately, during the pandemic was closed down and she was paying for storage space at that time and that seemed silly,” Parlin said. “So we started to store all of her items in the kitchen during that time. Then we got to know each other more and so we've collaborated on grant funding for emergency food boxes and holiday boxes and things like that.”
Currently, Guerrero is the only employee of the organization, but there are numerous volunteers who dedicate their time to help pick up groceries, pack boxes and deliver food to community members.
While the food boxes are a one-time distribution during emergency situations, Guerrero never wants to leave anyone in a dire situation.
She’ll try to give an additional box if the organization’s inventory allows it. But, even if they’re low on items, she’ll direct community members to other local resources that can help.
“She does have a very community-minded focus,” Parlin said of Guerrero. “She saw a gap in services for her community and decided that she would fill that. And so I think it's super admirable. She's always happy to take feedback and change things or try to improve things so that the program better serves her community, our community.”
The organization is always accepting donations, both in-kind and monetary, to keep the pantry filled.
In the future, Guerrero hopes to expand the organization’s delivery area, have a few paid employees and possibly host nutrition classes.
But whatever the future holds for South Tucson Community Outreach, making food assistance accessible for Tucson’s south-side community will always remain a priority.
“When people are truly needing assistance or help, our community comes together and they're very strong and we're able to get things done,” she says.
“Our community and our family are just very strong and bonded. There's times when we might not always have the same opinions or ideas, but I've seen firsthand how strong our community can be and has been and is willing to help. … Although we're small, we definitely can come together. And I also think that our culture is a part of that, too. We’re like familia, like family, and just being bonded and working together, we can be a very strong community. And we are a very strong community.”
For more information about South Tucson Community Outreach, check out their website or Instagram page.
Get a roundup of solutions reporting from the Arizona Daily Star at linktr.ee/starsolutions. Video by Caitlin Schmidt / Arizona Daily Star.
