Beverly Santos was living in San Francisco, working as a paralegal and thinking about law school, when she had a change of heart.

She wanted to create a life that “I didn’t need to take a vacation from,” she said. “That meant doing fulfilling work.”

Her choice of careers was influenced by her family: her parents, who immigrated from the Philippines and got their footing through community programs; and her older brother, who survived personal crises with the help of the Salvation Army and other agencies.

“I just felt in my heart that I just wanted to do work in the community,” she said.

Santos came to Hawaii in 2014 and started working at the Hawaiian Humane Society, but eventually made her way to what she calls “the perfect fit” — the Hawaii Foodbank. It’s also where she met her now-husband.

For the past year, Santos has been the Foodbank’s director of food drives and events, overseeing fundraisers and coordinating the efforts of organizations that want to collect food for those in need. One of those events, Canstruction, is on view through tomorrow at Kahala Mall: giant “sculptures” made from thousands of cans of food that will be donated to the agency.

Hawaii Foodbank began in a small warehouse on Sand Island in 1983, and now operates out of a much larger facility in Mapunapuna. It distributes more than 12.5 million pounds of food per year, including 3 million pounds of fresh produce, through partner agencies and feeding programs. Most of its inventory comes from its larger partners — retailers, farms, grocers. As a partner with the national Feeding America network, the Foodbank has access to the biggest national retailers, like Costco and Walmart. But the participation of smaller businesses and individuals provide invaluable community engagement, Santos said.

“For me, it’s heartwarming because you see … organizations or individuals or businesses of all sizes wanting to make a difference and do their part,” Santos said. “Ten dollars from someone can be a huge gift for them versus someone who has the capacity to give a lot more. So for me, it’s important to make sure I share our gratitude across the board.”

For Santos, her motivation comes from lessons learned from childhood.

“Growing up in a Filipino household, sharing food and gathering around the table was our way of expressing love and connecting,” she said. “As an adult, I’m now able to honor my parents by taking that value and infusing it into my whole life and use that to fuel my passion for my career.”

Question: How does the Foodbank handle the holiday season?

Answer: We have a new event that we started last year: our Holiday Food Drive, which we’re partnering with Goodwill on this year so that people can come down and drop off food donations or household goods, and then we have a community giving day.

Our food drive season is split up into two. We have our Annual Food Drive from January to April, and then we have what we call our Community Food Drive season, with churches, schools, smaller businesses who want to do things for the holiday season, pretty much starting in September through the holidays.

We felt the messaging was confusing for people — they couldn’t understand the difference. So we called it the Holiday Food Drive. We opened up our warehouse for the day so people can come and drop food off. We had Santa come down, the Oahu Wedding Association donated a photo booth, we had entertainment … We wanted to celebrate people’s giving hearts during the holiday season. It was successful and so we decided to do it again this year. We raised about a pallet of food and almost $5,000 in monetary donations.

Q: Next year the Annual Food Drive Day moves from April to August. Why?

A: In April we had the Annual Food Drive Day and in May we have the Stamp Out Hunger Food Drive (when postal carriers collect bags of canned food that donors put by their mailboxes). We have two big food drives back to back, and so we wanted to be more thoughtful and intentional about our inventory levels. With Hurricane Lane last year and the hurricane season we found ourselves in the situation where if the ports closed we’d be out of luck. And so we wanted to make sure that we had enough inventory to last us through hurricane season, and to spread out our asks. Next year, the annual food drive will kick off in May and Annual Food Drive Day will be on Aug. 15.

Q: Does Stamp Out Hunger do well?

A: I think people don’t realize how much of an impact one bag makes when you multiply it by all the residents in Hawaii. We’re in the warehouse all day long and truckloads are coming with crates of bags and bags of food. And when you see the big picture, all the bags in one place, it literally fills our warehouse. It’s been something we rely heavily on.

Q: Other initiatives?

A: Another new thing we launched this past year is our Keiki Pantry. … It’s basically a pantry set up in a school so that kids who need a snack during the school day can come. And if they need a bag to take home to share then they would have that, too. Our logo isn’t on anything so there’s no additional shame involved. So now we’re in 10 schools and our high school on Kauai. We’re hoping to expand to the other islands as well.

Our next target is to continue our outreach with our senior population: We’re hoping to start pantries for them as well, in senior living facilities, mostly. We already have one program — our senior food box program — as well as our farmers market vouchers so that they can get fresh produce.

Q: Is the Foodbank concerned about encouraging healthier eating?

A: This year we partnered with the American Heart Association to start talking about how we can start to drive the conversation toward healthier eating. So we’re more specific about what we ask for, so not just canned protein, but canned protein such as salmon, chicken, tuna.

Q: A new event, Black Out Hunger, will be held on Nov. 14. How did that come about?

A: Ron (Mizutani, the Foodbank’s CEO), wanted to assemble a group of young professionals and extend our reach in the community and reach the millennials and the younger generation. We have this first event in November: Black Out Hunger. It’s more like a pau hana networking event; the attire will be all black in solidarity against hunger. We’re encouraging organizations to send their younger management and up-and-coming leaders to get the conversation going about hunger and how they can get involved.

Q: What are some common misperceptions about the Foodbank?

A: The misconception is that the Foodbank collects canned goods and we distribute them to homeless people. There’s so much more to the Foodbank than that. Why it’s so important to me is because we’re able to help our most vulnerable populations — our seniors and our kids.

Q: Do people object to the Foodbank helping the homeless?

A: I think people have different views of homelessness. Some people think it’s their fault and blame them and so don’t feel they should take any part in enabling that. The homeless are a population that we serve. But it’s a small part of who we serve. Really, in addition to kids and seniors, the people we’re helping most are working families. Mom and dad are working full-time jobs, sometimes two jobs, and then get hit with an unexpected emergency, like a car accident or broken arm. Most people can’t sustain a $300 emergency and they choose between paying rent and food. A lot of times with the homelessness issue, people feel hopeless because they don’t know how to help in the right way. When you help the Foodbank you are being part of the solution, because by doing so we’re able to keep people together in their homes.

Q: What is your greatest challenge?

A: It’s being able to articulate our message and what we do, and dispelling the myths that are out there — in helping people to understand that we’re there as a safety net, a resource. Another big challenge for us is shame. During the partial government shutdown, we had TSA employees coming to the Foodbank after work and feeling like, this isn’t for me, this is for other people who don’t have jobs. No, this is why we’re here.

What we find is, when we ask our donors, “What motivates you to give to us?”, a lot of times (they say): “When I was on hard times, you were there.” We see this cycle of healing coming back. Critics of food banks think it’s a Band-Aid solution, but for us, we’ve seen the effects of generations of giving back.