Our Story

After 17 years of working in the nonprofit sector, I founded Food, Joy, and Toys to build on my work around three core areas:

1. Food Inadequacy for children and adults locally in the Bay Area and globally

2. Building community for seniors in the Bay Area, particularly those from immigrant communities

3. Providing resources for refugees resettling in the Bay Area

(1) Food Inadequacy: Without proper nutrition one cannot move forwards towards being productive in any area. Nearly 40% of children have stunted growth due to malnutrition in my home country of Pakistan, and locally, 1 in 5 Californians are food deprived. While working for a local nonprofit organization we started a snack distribution program in a school in Livermore for Pre-K children. The school did not have government funding for providing snacks to these children and more than 50% of the parents dropped them to the school without breakfast or snacks. So when we turned up with a box of organic milk and a pack of snacks in their classroom the children were all smiles. I remember when the teacher told them, “You all will get these snacks regularly now”, a little girl almost jumped with joy as she asked, “Everyday?”

(2) Communities for seniors: According to a study conducted by the University of California, “40% of seniors experience loneliness. They feel disconnected from family and community and that as a whole affects their physical and emotional health.” In my own life, I have always taken care of seniors, including my parents and parents-in-laws. My experience with them taught me no food or gift makes them happier than company of friends and family and that is the biggest element that they miss as immigrants who left their extended families behind.

(3) Opportunities for refugees: In 2017, I visited a Syrian refugee camp in Berlin- Wilmersdorf. I met children between the ages of 3-9 while they all sat in a room and painted, surrounded by colorful toys. These children were smiling but it was never full, it always seemed to have a fear lurking back somewhere. Once these children left the room their art therapist shared their art work with me. Nearly all of them had either a boat ride, a road intersection with a car, a house with warm food or just something fun like a balloon. I asked the therapist why there are only five themes in these paintings between so many children. She explained that all of them miss home, and home is where there is happiness, and their food, their moms, their families that are all alive and together celebrating. Since these children had lost all of that, and were in a new country having lost either their father, their sibling or their mother and they could not express their grief in words, they just drew their sorrow with colors. Each child drew food and family, and the therapist explained to me that food that was their cultural food is a sign of comfort that is associated with happier times for them. They were fed in Berlin and it filled their bellies but it didn’t satisfy their appetite or their souls because it was not the food they had at home.

These experiences with children in local schools, seniors in my family, and Syrian refugees helped shape the launch of this new organization: this is why the mission of Food, Joy and Toys is to bridge the food inadequacy gap for vulnerable communities, to ensure each child always have a gift to unwrap on days of celebration, and to make sure our community of seniors can continue to foster connection.

Thank you for your support,

Ambreen Jamal

Founder, Food, Joy and Toys