WHAT WE DO

In the summer we dry peaches and nectarines in the sun. Fruit grown by local farmers which has been culled as not marketable, is donated to Gleanings.  Processing the fruit is a labor-intensive task that requires the combined efforts of many volunteers.  We do this during the summer when the warm California sunshine can best dry the fruit. We call the summer months our peach season.  During the summer we have a servant-leadership development internship we call our summer staff program.  Young adults are empowered and mobilized to lead the production of our dried fruit, while they are being mentored for leadership.

Throughout the remainder of the year, we produce a nutritious, and tasty dried soup mix from bulk dehydrated vegetables blended with spices, legumes, and grain products. Most ingredients are donated and volunteers process them to be used either in the soup mix production, or to be distributed as a single product in smaller family sized packages. We also operate a quilt room where we hand-craft beautiful quilts.  Quilts are another tangible representation of God’s love.  Many of the quilts produced have gone directly to Holocaust survivors in Israel, but as quilt production continues other ministries like orphanages are also receiving these beautiful gifts.  Because the soup mix production is our primary focus, the rest of the year that is not summer, we call our soup season.

As a part of Youth With A Mission (YWAM), we highly value discipleship and missions mobilization, and offer a Discipleship Training School (DTS).  The DTS is a high-impact school featuring twelve weeks of classroom training followed by eight weeks of practical missions outreach – usually somewhere internationally where Gleanings food is being used in ministry.  The DTS is a prerequisite to becoming missionary staff with YWAM.