North Coast group helps feed community — one backpack, grocery bag at a time

There’s a weekday hive of activity at 2190 Main St. in Morro Bay and at the Monarch Grove Elementary School basketball court in Los Osos as volunteers hustle to pack up food that will be given later to the people who need it most.

It’s the Estero Bay Kindness Coalition in action.

The nonprofit is like a food-distribution octopus, stretching out in many directions as it seeks donations and volunteers, accepts deliveries, stacks groceries and then stuffs them into backpacks for school children and bags for families.

Coalition founder Bobby deLancellotti said in a Feb. 23 phone interview that he’d had a brainstorm about the effort during a San Luis Obispo event, when a fellow recognized deLancellotti, and told the former pastor that he’d been an immigrant child living with his disadvantaged family downtown in a small room over Camozzi’s Saloon.

The man had since blossomed into a teacher and coach, and he thanked his benefactor, explaining that the food donations and encouragement deLancellotti and others from the Cambria Vineyard Church had provided then “really sustained us.”

“It was a beautiful moment,” deLancellotti recalled. “It really makes you feel so good.”

His history of giving, that moment and others like them were part of the genesis of the Coalition, he said.

As the Coalition’s website says, “Our primary mission is to partner with for-profits, nonprofits, churches and schools to benefit the greater good and those living on the margins in the Estero Bay community that currently stretches from San Simeon to the Los Osos/Baywood Park area.”

DeLancellotti said it more simply: “Our only agenda is to love without an agenda, protect people’s dignity and demonstrate what it is to really love each other.”

“It’s not a religious group,” he emphasized, “but a community partnership of 21 nonprofits, 31 for-profits, 10 churches, eight schools and 60-to-70 active volunteers.”

Coalition leader has background in churches, nonprofit work

DeLancellotti’s background is interwoven with the Central Coast and helping people.

The 68-year-old was born in Brooklyn, New York. When he was in sixth grade, his family moved to Newport Beach. He’s been a California guy ever since.

Moving to Cambria in 1974, he then served as a pastor of Cambria Vineyard Church.

In 1995, the deLancellottis moved to Yorba Linda for 10 years, but moved back to Cambria for a year and then to Cayucos, where they still live.

During those years, deLancellotti held lengthy church positions, but then went to work for the nonprofit Lifewater International in San Luis Obispo, “advocating throughout the U.S. on behalf of the poorest of the poor.”

He said after back surgery in 2011, he “couldn’t handle all that traveling anymore,” and was basically out of work.

Then he had that fateful conversation at the San Luis Obispo event, receiving just one of the compliments and comments that have shaped the deLancellottis’ life ever since.

Coalition founders start by offering free meals

During their first two decades on the North Coast, he and his wife, Denise deLancellotti, plus Dennis and Shelley White, organized a free Cambria Thanksgiving dinner.

“It started with one turkey we barbecued at the Joslyn Center,” deLancellotti recalled, serving it to people they knew who didn’t have enough money to buy food for a holiday meal, or a place in which to prepare and serve it. From there it has grown to feed more than 700 happy diners each year, from all walks of life, although fewer could be fed during the pandemic, when home delivery replaced in-person meals.

The annual dinner “is still going strong, and I love it,” deLancellotti said.

Meanwhile, the Coalition’s food-sharing effort started in December 2017 with baby steps.

That Christmas, he, Denise and others “adopted” eight Del Mar Elementary School students that staff had identified as being most vulnerable.

He said the team bought each child “a fun gift and a practical one and gave each family a $100 grocery gift certificate.”

In a “beautiful thank you letter” from the school principal, deLancellotti remembered she added a striking postscript: “Did you know that 64% of our students live at the poverty line or below?”

The youngsters rely on free-and-reduced-cost school lunches during the week, but may not get enough to eat on weekends. (Since then, that percentage has increased, deLancellotti added.)

The statistic broke his heart, and crystallized his determination to do something constructive about it.

The Coalition launched the “Got Your Back” backpack program in April 2018, deLancellotti said, starting with just 10 students in one school. It was billed as a nutrition club “to protect their dignity.”

“Within about 18 months, we were at eight schools including the Montessori, feeding more than 200 students,” he said.

On Fridays, when volunteers hand out the backpacks at schools, each one is chock-a-block filled with two breakfasts, two lunches, two dinners, healthy snacks, fruit, milk and juice.

Group starts grocery giveaway during pandemic

The Coalition’s next arm reached out to families in a move triggered by the COVID-19 crisis.

“Since day one of the pandemic, we’ve done the Bags of Love program,” deLancellotti said, “giving participating needy families two full bags of groceries each week.”

The program now helps 132 families in Morro Bay, Los Osos and Baywood Park, he said.

DeLancellotti said they worked with the Rotary Club (and specifically Miguel Sandoval) in Cambria and San Simeon, as well as the Lions Club and other groups.

He described the shared efforts as “a beautiful coming together of diverse communities, working together to help the food-and-housing insecure.”

As the Coalition has grown, they recently added the Sunshine and Seed Kids’ Clothing Collective program, deLancellotti said, which currently provides children in families with “dignity, help, new and gently used clothing, new socks and underwear and self-care bags for moms.”

The self-care bags even thoughtfully include chocolate.

What’s next for Kindness Coalition?

On the Coalition’s planning-ahead wish list is securing a large building to house a store from which they can provide food, clothes, job referrals and training, all under one big roof.

For now, their warehouse is at that Main Street address, alongside the business of one of their supporting partners, Michael Wolfe’s Avocado Shack in Morro Bay.

Like all nonprofits, the Coalition relies on donations and partnerships, deLancellotti said.

“We have to raise between $8,000 and $10,000 a month, just for the protein-rich food — the same quality of food we’d want to eat: eggs, butter, milk, bread, meat at least once a month,” he said. “And food prices are skyrocketing, some have more than doubled.”

“We can’t feed a family for a week, but we can help them over the hump,” he said.

Donations can be made on the Kindness Coalition website.

Coalition founder grateful for “flow of goodness and grace’

The deLancellottis have been married for 40 years and have four children.

Their daughter, Katie deLancellotti of Templeton, works part-time with them in the Coalition, specializing in grant writing and social media management. Two other daughters — Coast Union High School grad Stacey Kerstetter and Elizabeth deLancellotti Jones — are teachers. Son David deLancellotti is a psychologist in Vermont.

Reflecting back on all those years and looking into the future, Bobby deLancellotti explained that the Coalition, “relies on the beauty of community.”

“When you start something like this, there’s so much relational connection,” he said. “I have incredible gratitude to have been in this flow of goodness and grace for so long. Being able to really help people has been so gratifying, because so many people are living day-to-day, paycheck-to-paycheck, especially during the pandemic. I feel so fortunate to have been able to make a difference in their lives, to prove that somebody really loves them.”

This story was originally published March 7, 2022 at 5:00 AM.