Checking in to give you some updates on the last week at Food For Free. 

Our regular programming
Our drivers are continuing rescue food five days a week. Although we’ve seen significant drops in the amount of food donated by supermarkets, we’ve also seen an uptick in the amount of food we can rescue from Amazon Fresh, so the overall supply, though smaller, is relatively stable. Additionally, about half of the agencies we serve have closed and so we are able to meet the needs of those remaining open.

Our COVID Response programs
We delivered food to almost 900 Cambridge homes between Tuesday and Thursday of this week with the help of 119 wonderful volunteers. About 600 were first-time deliveries and the rest were week-2 deliveries. Our master list of families and individuals needing food is growing as I write this (up to 975 homes), thanks to all of our partners doing outreach, and to the City of Cambridge for publishing and managing a hotline for people to call should they need food.

We also delivered almost 15,000 pounds of food to Somerville for distribution to individuals and families in that community.

This was also a week of working out the kinks. All new programs have kinks but even more so when the program is imagined and implemented in just a few days. Our shared spreadsheet of homes needing food led to some people receiving two deliveries, and in other cases incorrect addresses. We responded in real-time and used today, Friday, to reassess our processes. We also created new volunteer jobs like “door monitor”, to relieve Cambridge DPW from letting people in and out, and “site leader”, to help support our staff and build some resilience into the program. We feel very good about going into next week in a way that is easier for our team to manage and that ensures fewer duplications, address issues, and other bumps. Although I’m sure we’ll keep learning!

Now that we are finding a routine, we can come up for air and start to plan further ahead. We’ve worked with our wonderful partners at the Greater Boston Food Bank, to enable a third daily pickup by our drivers. This will allow us to begin delivering food to other communities. We’ve been talking with a housing complex in Roxbury as well as a group serving multiple cities and towns, and evaluating the possibility of adding second delivery to Somerville each week. We will keep you posted on our work.

Your support continues to buoy our team and help make this work possible during such a trying time. So thank you!