Once a month, a rotating group of volunteers convene at the Tunlii Community Center on the Yavapai-Apache Nation to prepare nearly 500 food boxes for community members.
The community center, which normally hosts pageants and other events, is transformed into a bustling stockroom, where boxes are organized with assembly-line precision.
“We’ve been doing this for the past two and a half years, since COVID first started,” program organizer Matilda Cassadore said. “We’re a small community and we do have quite a few elders that still don’t want to go out to the stores; they don’t want to go out in public and they feel safer when we bring it to them.”
Cassadore said the program has evolved since its inception in 2020.
“When we first started we were ordering from Shamrock and the [Cliff Castle] Casino would order from us, and that was hard,” she said. “We used to meet in what is now the food distribution building, it’s a little building; we used to have to fill bags [of flour, beans] and whatever we were given out [by hand].”
After a while, Cassadore began to work with Bashas’ grocery store in Camp Verde to place bulk orders. Now, all of the orders come from there.
“Once a month, we purchase a big order from [Bashas’],” she said. The cost ranges from $58,000 to $78,000 per month.
Cassadore said the nation has been using American Rescue Plan Act funds to pay for the food, however, the program may only have a couple of months left before funding runs out.
“August or September will be our last unless [the Yavapai-Apache Tribal Council] reallocates some more money,” she said. “The tribe allocated a certain amount [of ARPA funds] for food distribution so that we’re able to keep our elders and disabled at home so they don’t have to go to the store and be exposed.”
In addition to delivery services, Cassadore and a rotating team of volunteers from various organizations such as the Yavapai-Apache Public Works Department coordinate a pickup service for additional orders, which takes place at the Tunlii Community Center.
The entire distribution cycle lasts three days, however, planning for each event takes about three weeks.
“[We take] like a week’s break,” Cassadore said.
A typical cycle begins with meal planning, which Cassadore joked, “I’m running out of ideas.”
After the meals are planned, the ordering process begins.
“We put the menu list together, I send it to Bashas’ and ask them to review it and let me know what they’re not able to purchase; it’s a process,” Cassadore said.
Once the order is ready, a convoy of trucks heads out to pick up the order. Bashas’ staff help volunteers load it, Cassadore said.
“It takes a couple of hours; we pick up at 7 [a.m.] then [the volunteers] go pretty much back and forth until about noon,” she said.
“When we go out to deliver to the elders and the disabled and our community, they’re very thankful, so they put signs outside, or they put out water and snacks and tell us thank you and yeah, it’s really neat, helping everybody,” she said.
While the future of the program is uncertain, Cassadore said that if the program were to stop, the community will be given a couple of months’ notice.
“If the program stops, we do plan on giving them a notice so that it’s not just an automatic [ending],” she said. “Actually, the end of this month, the [Yavapai-Apache Nation] Chairman [Jon Huey] will send out a notice letting them know our funding is coming down, unless council decides to allocate some more money.”
Cassadore said if the program is discontinued, “the nation’s food bank in Middle Verde will be able to assist those who really, really need help.”
