We’re Partnering with Waymo to Deliver Food to Heart of Los Angeles’ families 

  

Karsh Center staff and volunteers conduct a wide range of services, including driving to pick up and deliver food and grocery bag donations. These deliveries are essential to our service model and crucial to our community. However, many times we struggle to find volunteers or staff to drive to different locations as it can be tiring, time-consuming, and nerve-wracking. 

The Karsh Center is excited to announce an innovative delivery pilot program that would allow staff and volunteers to spend less time transporting items to a partner organization and more time with the people they love to serve.

Waymo, an autonomous driving technology company with a mission to make it safe and easy for people and things to get where they’re going, has chosen the Karsh Center to be one of the first organizations in Los Angeles to test out this new program. For several consecutive weeks, they will deliver 30 bags of food from the Karsh Center to our collaborator Heart of LA (HOLA). HOLA has been a long time collaborator of Karsh and  provides critical comprehensive after-school programming for local children and other essential services to their families.

“At the Karsh Center, our vision is to work with mission-aligned service providers to help build a future in which every member of our community can thrive,” said Frances Nova, Director of Programs and Operations at the Karsh Center. “We’re so excited about this partnership and the potential of autonomous driving technology to help us safely and more efficiently serve our collaborator, HOLA, and the wider community.” 

Where HOLA staff once had to dedicate time each week to the Karsh Center to pick up the bags of groceries, Waymo’s I-PACE and Pacifica vehicles will now deliver the bags instead. The food donations to HOLA are part of Karsh Center’s  food and nutrition security work, which we have scaled up over the last 19 months and expanded services in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

HOLA, which has been serving the Macarthur Park and surrounding community for over 30 years, has also increased  their services during the pandemic. During our annual Karsh Center Caregivers Week in May of 2021, HOLA participated in a panel about how our collaborator organizations have adapted their service models and innovated during the pandemic.

“We were so excited when we were offered the opportunity to partner with Karsh and Waymo on this new innovative delivery system for our food distribution,” Michelle Sandoval, Director of Family Services at HOLA, said. “Throughout the pandemic we just knew how difficult it was for our families to get food, and there was a lot of food insecurity that happened during that time. […] And so Karsh Center really has been the backbone for supporting our families in that way.”

Our partnership with Waymo to serve HOLA is one of the first of its kind in Los Angeles and is modeled on the community delivery partnerships Waymo has established in Arizona, California and Texas. At the start of the pandemic, Waymo began partnering with local nonprofits to deliver food, textbooks, PPE and other essential supplies to those most in need.

“We are honored to collaborate with Karsh Center to deliver to HOLA; these are two nonprofits that have been serving Los Angeles for decades,” said Amanda Ventura Zink, public affairs manager at Waymo. “We believe that our technology holds enormous potential to complement and empower the ways these organizations are already leveraging mobility to serve their communities.”

Autonomous driving technology also has the potential to improve road safety, increase independence and enhance access to mobility. The Waymo Driver is designed to simultaneously follow road rules, remain constantly vigilant, perceive and differentiate other road users, and make safe driving decisions.

“Being able to use technology to do more than just [drive], but also do good for  the community is something that we commend Waymo for wanting to do and for bringing that to us today,” said Sandoval. “To know that they’re wanting to partner with more organizations and bring that to more partnerships in the future, we are completely on board and appreciative. I know everyonewho will benefit from this is extremely grateful as well.”