Photo By Ben Hensley/ Members of the Central California Food Bank and the George & Melodie Rogers Foundation celebrate grounding breaking for expansion project.

Central California Food Bank (CCFB) broke ground on Tuesday on its new Santé Volunteer Center, a “capstone project” for the nonprofit which moved into its current home in 2018.

The project, long a dream for co-CEOs Natalie Caples and Kym Dildine, will serve more than 7,000 volunteers who annually donate their time to helping neighbors in need, sorting produce, packing boxes and appearing in droves to feed neighbors.

“Today really is the culmination of a vision and purpose for the space,” Caples said. “For us, it is really the capstone project of this distribution center facility that we purchased back in the summer of 2018.”

The center will provide space and resources to enhance volunteer experience, including areas for hands-on packing and sorting, training and workforce development rooms, and the only USDA-certified protein repacking room west of Texas.

The room, which was made possible by the support of an annual million-dollar donation by the George & Melodie Rogers Foundation. Since George’s death in 2021, the foundation has donated $1 million to a local nonprofit every year, honoring his philanthropic legacy by supporting Valley nonprofits.

Since acquiring the building in 2018, CCFB has made vast improvements to the site, retrofitting two large cooler spaces and adding 5,000 square-feet of freezer space to the distribution center. In 2020, they remodeled their office space to accommodate for a growing team, and in 2021, received a pack line gift, rehabbing their produce pack line — the only produce pack-line at a food bank in the nation.

This year, CCFB completed its South Canopy project, expanding the reach of its Groceries2Go program, which launched in March 2020 as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“This has been a long time in the making for Kim and I,” Caples added. “We aren’t just breaking ground on a building, we are laying a new foundation for the amazing, critical advancements in how we partner to serve our community.”