Nonprofit News is a weekly feature highlighting those who make Long Beach a better place. For more uplifting stories and volunteer opportunities, sign up for our Doing Good in the LBC newsletter here.

From fighting oil pipelines through the Standing Rock reservation to bringing supplies to hurricane victims in Texas, Kristen Cox has always been involved in activism.

As a clinical psychologist and lifelong activist, Cox worked with nearly every struggling population, from children in the foster care system to people experiencing substance abuse.

“The more I saw how this system doesn’t really work for people the way we need it to, the more determined I was to make it work for people,” Cox said.

The “original little kernel of an idea” for Long Beach Community Table came from friends of Cox’s who worked in Cuba, during the peak oil crisis in 1991.

As Cubans struggled with access to food and basic necessities due to sanctions placed on the country following the fall of the Soviet Union, community members gathered together and created neighborhood gardens, uniting together to survive the crisis, Cox explained.

Deciding to turn her focus inward to the local community in Long Beach, Cox chose to create an organization that not only provides nutritious food and essentials to those in need, but focuses on community gardens and fostering self-sufficiency as well.

In September of 2018, the endeavor began with distributing food to around two dozen people in local parks. At the same time, the organization started building gardens in people’s backyards, with the goal of teaching them how to become more self-sustaining, said Cox.

Now, Long Beach Community Table serves about 3,000 people each week, distributing food, clothing, and hygiene items. Not only do members of the organization go to eight parks each weekend, but there are also four open pantries during the week.

“We really never thought it was going to get nearly as big as it did,” said Cox.

While the rising need during the pandemic led the food distribution program to increase, even expanding to deliver food, (at the pandemic’s height, Long Beach Community Table delivered to about 1,000 people a week), the gardening component paused until March of this year.

“A lot of the sources for materials like soil and wood and all that kind of dried up during COVID, they just didn’t want to put their people at risk,” said Cox. “Hopefully we’re moving back in the right direction.”

The organization functions as a mutual-aid, collaborative environment, and many of the people who receive food from the nonprofit also participate in volunteering, said Cox.

“Our thought is, let’s connect people and help them help each other,” she said.

For Cox, maintaining people’s dignity is “more important than anything else,” and providing tools to mutually sustain one another is the essence of the organization.

For many people experiencing homelessness, it is dehumanizing to be ignored by society, Cox said.

“They feel like nobody sees them, they feel like nobody cares,” she said. “When my husband and I first started going out to the parks, we would remember everybody, and they would remember us … and they were just so happy to have somebody look at them in the eye and care and not pretend that they couldn’t see them because they smell bad or whatever it was.”

High self esteem is interwoven with good mental health, and without the dignity of being seen by society, people are almost guaranteed to have extreme metal health issues, Cox explained.

“It’s really not exactly how people perceive, they think it’s drugs first, and then they become homeless, but it’s usually just some crazy financial situation,” she said.

Cox aims to provide a sturdier platform for people to try to navigate their lives, with plans to further expand the educational component of Long Beach Community Table.

She envisions providing parenting classes, anger management classes, and financial literacy courses, all aimed at “trying to get people to feel like they have more stability in their lives and to give them more tools to navigate the difficulties of modern life right now,” she said. She also hopes to start a laundromat for people who are housing insecure.

Cox knows the difference that stability can make it peoples’ lives— apart from having a master’s degree in the subject, she has experienced significant financial difficulties herself.

“I can relate and I can understand how people can get in the rotten situation that really is out of their control and has nothing to do with the choices that they made, it just can happen to anybody,” she said. “We’re all so much closer to that, 64% of people are living paycheck to paycheck in this country. Why not help our neighbors and actually care about what’s happening in our community, because it does affect us.”

As the organization has grown, Cox has had to turn her attention away from interacting with people and more toward administrative issues, although she tries to still work in the organization’s warehouse at least once a week just to keep her finger on the pulse of what’s happening in the community, she said.

“Everything that I’ve done in my life feels like that leads up to this,” said Cox. “I like to interact with people, I like to organize. And I like to see people’s lives improve.”

To get in touch with Long Beach Community Table, call 562-548-0774 or email  [email protected] or for Spanish speakers, [email protected].

To volunteer, email [email protected].

View donation information here.