Tesla Owners Club Of East Bay Helping Its Community Eat

The Tesla Owners Club of East Bay is doing more than just organizing Tesla-related events. It is focusing on adding philanthropic values into each of its events in order to help its local community.

Tesla owners in Northern California are having a Tesla owners meetup and are organizing a food drive. The meetup is on February 15th and encourages the Tesla community to help those in need by bringing canned food to be donated to their area food banks.

The Tesla Owners Club of East Bay, a local owners club for those living in Northern California and the Bay Area, is a young Tesla owners club that just got its approval from Tesla back in November. One of the core principles of this particular club is philanthropy and trying to help their community.

This meetup is in partnership with the local Tesla owners club and Detailership, a detail shop in Dublin, CA, that will show owners how to wash their vehicles as well as show them different types of paint protection. California Sunlight will also be there to talk about household power and demonstrate a mobile device that can work with your EV to create backup power during the event of a power outage.

“We launched this new Owner’s club out of desire, demand, and a growing necessity in the Northern California and Bay Area specifically. We got approval from Tesla in November, so we are quite a young and new group as it pertains to the growing Tesla Owners Club community and greater Tesla Community,” says Al Shen of Tesla Owners of East Bay.

“One of our Club’s core tenets has been an emphasis on philanthropy and trying to keep much of our activity hyper-local in support of our own community whenever possible. So far that has meant charity in support of local non-profits, and even things like marketing material like Club Business Cards, and our club T-shirts been printed here in our East Bay Community.”

The club’s events for the new year have been chosen to reflect these core values. Its most recent event was celebrating 2020 with an early sunrise and breakfast meetup on Treasure Island. There were 35 vehicles in attendance. There were also coordinated efforts for an informal canned food drive to help the area food banks. “We learned that contrary to common thought, food banks are in great need of food donations coming off the holiday season,” a club co-founder, Al, wrote to me in the article. Members and guests donated and collected 190 pounds of non-perishable food.

“To follow that up, now leading into our next event, a DIY workshop to learn some tips, tricks, and hacks on how to better care for your EV and keep it in tip-top shape and clean, it is happening this weekend on Saturday 2/15 in Dublin, California. Because we had some success with a food drive last month, we are bringing the challenge back to our attendees and challenging our group to double our donations this weekend!”

The Truth About Hunger

In 2013, 49.1 million Americans lived in food-insecure households. This term means that a person isn’t sure of where their next meal is coming from. That was millions of adults and 15.8 million kids under 18.

Food banks are critical when it comes to helping families have food that is safe and healthy. However, after the holiday season, most people seem to forget about the poor and needy. These families are still struggling well after the holidays. The “spirit of giving” is actively promoted from the end of October through December, but these are just three months out of a year. This is why it’s vital, for those who can, to continue to support food banks and other charities that help America’s less fortunate.

If you would like to contribute to Tesla Owners Club of East Bay’s efforts, you can, but if you are living in a different community, perhaps looking into your local charities of aid would be more helpful. Feeding America can help you locate your local food banks that are in need of donations.

Featured image by Kyle Awayan of Tesla Owners Club of East Bay.