As the summer heat continues to strain local resources, a Tempe-based personal finance company recently donated 26,000 bottles of water to the Tempe Community Action Agency (TCAA).
The nonprofit expects to distribute the water to people across the East Valley served by programs like Meals on Wheels.
TCAA’s Director of Mission Advancement, Carrie Aranba, said that for many people who are homebound, experiencing homelessness or food insecurity, having secure access to water isn’t guaranteed.
“It's those types of things that make people vulnerable to not having water,” she said. “But this is a huge thing because it allows us to put resources in other places. It allows us to have the water to freely give to those in need, but also to then move some of those resources into other areas that are desperately needed.”
It’s crucial help amid an uptick in community need that began with the pandemic.
“We have seen, of course, through the pandemic, an uptick — a huge rise in need within the community,” said Aranba. “But the interesting piece is, the need has not come down. So we know that through inflation, food prices have become a lot higher. Housing pricing, especially here in Tempe, has become out of reach for many families and individuals.”
It’s the largest donation in the organization’s history, and Aranba said volunteers are already working hard to distribute it.
“It's going out through our foodbox, it’s in our food pantry, and our go-bags for those that are in need of meals right away,” she said. “It's going out to our shelter participants and our Interfaith Homeless Emergency Lodging Program, or ‘IHELP’ shelter.”
The several-thousand pallets of water TCAA volunteers now have access to will free up resources to improve programs like Meals on Wheels, deliveries to people who are homebound and the IHELP shelter.
“Resources are tight for all of us in our homes, but they're also tight in nonprofits right now,” explained Aranba. “The need is so high and resources are always limited, and so the fact that we have this resource that will keep us going for months is just phenomenal.”
And according to Aranba, it began with food pantry volunteers from Achieve, a Tempe-based personal finance company.
“They had a group of employees that wanted to give back, and so they came and packed boxes and sorted food and did all sorts of tasks within our food pantry back at the end of winter, beginning of spring,” she recalled. “And they just saw that we were going to have this great need in the summer with the heat, and they wanted to do something to make the community better.”
So, she said, they organized a company-wide water drive.
“It was a competition, and they took the competitive nature to heart,” said Aranba. “To see the water stacked up in their lobby, and then on the curb for our truck to pick it up was absolutely unreal.”
TCAA’s focus now is on ensuring that those most vulnerable receive those donations, especially as the heat continues.
