One of the Santa Clarita Valley's most important resources for the underserved members of the community, the Santa Clarita Valley Food Pantry, now extends a helping hand to families with infants - the "Healthy Baby Program."

"The Healthy Baby Program is designed for infants from birth to 12 months of age," said Belinda Crawford, executive director of the SCV Food Pantry. "This program is designed to help our clients with children in this age range meet the nutritional and physical needs for their children. We provide age-appropriate high-nutrition baby foods and formula as well as bilingual tools to educate parents and caregivers about the role good nutrition plays in their children's health."

The Santa Clarita Valley Food Pantry was founded in 1986 as a 501(c)3 nonprofit public benefit corporation with a mission is to alleviate hunger throughout the SCV, Crawford said.

"We accomplish this with a dynamic group of volunteers who source donations, package nutritious food to stretch a family's food supply and distribute that food to qualifying residents in the Santa Clarita Valley. We are celebrating our 20th anniversary," she said.

Given the relative affluence of the SCV, are some residents actually going hungry because they cannot afford to buy enough food?

"Los Angeles County is the hunger capital of the nation with over 8 percent of its residents' food insecure, which means not knowing where their next meal is coming from or skipping meals so that others in the family will have enough food," Crawford said. "The SCV mirrors the rest of Los Angeles County. According to a study published on the city of Santa Clarita Web site, 16 percent of the residents in the city of Santa Clarita have a total household income less than $29,999. Ninety-two percent of the clients of the SCV Food Pantry live in the city of Santa Clarita. The idea of hungry children in our community and the idea of hungry senior citizens in our community breaks my heart. And yes, there are more than we can imagine right here in our community."

Crawford said she is getting the word out about this significant program by educating other local organizations about the services provided by the food pantry through outreach efforts.

"We recently took part in the 'Mom's To Be Day' at Whole Foods Market in Valencia where we distributed information about the SCV Food Pantry and introduced our new Healthy Baby Program," she said. "Many of our clients are referred to us by other local organizations; the more they know about the services we provide, the better the organization can relay that information to their clients."

Despite lower incomes, do families really need to be educated about how to feed an infant?

"Many new parents are not aware what foods should be introduced to their child at what stage of development or which foods can be metabolized a specific ages," Crawford said. "Gastrointestinal stress and food allergies later in life are just a couple of the difficulties parents might face when introducing particular foods too early in the development of their child. Foods of high-nutritional value are, of course, more expensive."

Crawford said the Healthy Baby Program will include the distribution of educational materials, high-nutrition baby food, formula, baby cereals and diapers.

Crawford lives in Saugus and has lived in the SCV for more than 13 years.

"I feel very fortunate to live in such a caring community and am proud to call the Santa Clarita Valley my home," Crawford said.

Crawford said that her introduction to the food pantry was through her church where she would participate in food drives.

"A friend of mine, who was a volunteer here, told me of the executive director opening and suggested I apply. I met with three of the board members and their passion was contagious. I've been here since March 2003," she said, adding that she finds her position to be rewarding because she knows she is making a difference.

"The awareness of the SCV Food Pantry had really grown in the past few years. That's not only evident by the number of new clients we've been able to help but also by the amount of supplemental and nutritious food that we've been able to provide low income families in our community. We've designed new programs like the Healthy Baby Program and the Milk Money Program (one gallon of fresh milk to each child of our clients per month) to better serve the nutritional needs o our clients," Crawford said. "What bigger reward is there than to know that you're helping make a difference in the lives of your neighbors in need?"

For more information on the Santa Clarita Valley Food Pantry call 255-9078.