Food For Free may be best-known for our food rescue work, but purchasing food has always been part of our arsenal. As Sasha Purpura put it “The goal is addressing hunger. We will use whatever tools we have at our disposal to do that.”
While our Food Rescue program continues to serve programs in ten Greater Boston cities (read more about that here), there is no way it can meet the extraordinary need that emergency food programs are responding to right now.
“We have more money than trucks right now” says Operations Director Ryan Lee, “And want to turn that money into food for hungry people in communities that have been particularly hard hit by COVID-19 and its effects. The Greater Boston Food Bank and Project Bread helped us identify communities that need help and have partner organizations that will be able to take advantage of that help.”
We looked at communities within our service area, identified ones with high need and limited resources, and chose these four for our first round of investment: Chelsea, Lynn, Revere, and Waltham.
Food For Free will allocate $25,000 to buy food for each community from May 1-June 30. The details will vary based on the needs, preferences, and abilities of our partner in each city.
Chelsea: We will partner with the Salvation Army to pay for wholesale orders of shelf-stable grocery items (like rice, beans, and pasta) from Prime Foods New England.
Lynn: We will partner with the Salvation Army and YMCA to pay for wholesale orders of shelf-stable groceries from Prime Foods New England.
Revere: Food For Free will work with Revere Crisis Response. Details are to be determined.
Waltham: We will partner with Healthy Waltham to purchase produce (and possibly meat, depending price, availability, and Healthy Waltham’s priorities) for their weekly distributions on Saturday. Our fantastic, long-standing partner Boston Area Gleaners will deliver the food to Healthy Waltham.
This is only possible because of the extraordinary generosity of Food For Free’s donors and the wonderful collaborative spirit of Greater Boston’s nonprofit sector. Says Food For Free’s Development Director, Michelle Holcomb “We are so lucky to be able to do this work in this place.”
Funding for this program comes from the Greater Boston Food Bank and the Popplestone Foundation.
