March 2025
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April 2025
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assistlist.org is a list of low- or no-cost meals and food pantry events taking place in the city of Berkeley and surrounding areas.
Scroll down to see when and where you can get something to eat today, or click on a calendar day to see what's happening on that date.
Calendars will refresh at the beginning of every month.
assistlist.org was founded on the simple premise that food offered is food wasted when no one knows it's there.
While other organizations have produced printed and online lists of food programs in the past, infrequent updates cause those lists to lose accuracy rapidly. People relying on those lists simply end up going hungry when meal times change, locations change, or when a meal program no longer exists. Food lists are a secondary function for other groups, but the primary mission of assistlist.org is collecting, verifying and maintaining resource information for maximum accuracy.
assistlist.org differs from other programs by verifying meal and pantry events in person on a regular and frequent basis, updating changes as they occur.
If you also depend on these meals, you can help by sending an e-mail whenever you notice a mistake or something missing from assistlist.org.
Q: I can't see the daily schedules. Clicking on the calendar doesn't do anything.
A: Sounds like JavaScript isn't enabled on your browser. Do a quick search to learn how to enable JavaScript on your browser and try again.
Q: Why is assistlist.org displaying meals for the wrong date?
A: assistlist.org shows you meals for the current date, based on the date on your phone or computer. If the date is wrong, you should check the settings on your device and make sure the date is set correctly.
Q: Why are there only two months displayed?
A: assistlist.org receives updates at least every month so you will always see the current month and the next month. Information changes from time to time, so we don't want to generate a year's worth of information and then have to thow it away and start over again because of one small change.
Q: Why don't you list menus so we know what they're serving at each meal?
A: Each organization plans and prepares meals on their own. Some groups serve the same thing every time, while others vary what they serve. assistlist.org isn't involved in any of the meal planning, so we can only report what the organizations tell us or what we've seen them do in the past.
Q: How often do you update this site?
A: Other meal lists can go a couple of years between updates but assistlist.org is run by people who actually attend the meals, so we verify data on a daily basis and make updates as soon as anything changes.
This website is the work of a single person, doing everything from information gathering to software design and development to marketing. While I'm happy to provide my labor, servers, server space, bandwidth and marketing materials cost money, so donations go a long way to fulfilling the mission of assistlist.org.
501(c)(3) not-for-profit status is pending, so donations are not tax-deductible at the moment. 100% of initial funds received will go towards not-for-profit filing fees.
After obtaining not-for-profit status, subsequent donations will help with marketing costs (primarily the printing and distribution assistlist.org business cards to service provider organizations as well as the people who use these services), improving server software to provide greater functionality and robustness, and then expanding capacity to cover communities beyond the SF East Bay.
Please get in touch if you can help.