Cambridge, MA (April 1, 2019) – Non-profit Food For Free announced today that it has strategically expanded its focus on student hunger in public schools, colleges, and universities. To highlight their refined mission, Food For Free revealed an organizational rebrand and new website designed to increase opportunities to partner with the Greater Boston educational and business community and reach people in need.
“After many years working to alleviate the hunger epidemic throughout Greater Boston, we recognized that schools are the community’s ideal entry point to confront hunger for students and their families,” said Sasha Purpura, Executive Director, Food For Free. “As a result, we created unique school-based programs that use schools as a pathway to addressing student and family food insecurity. Partnering with the educational institutions and socially conscious businesses in our state, gives us the resources needed to provide healthy, nutritious food to the people who need it.”
Food For Free’s School Programs include its Cambridge and Somerville Weekend Backpack Programs, free School Markets, and Family Meals Program. Its Weekend Backpack Programs in Cambridge and Somerville provide students at risk of hunger with healthy, kid-friendly meals to take home every weekend. Students are provided with four meals worth of food for every child in their household, as well as milk and snacks.
Food For Free’s free School Markets look like traditional farmers’ markets and are open to the community. Families can stock up on fresh produce and other nutritious staples while picking up their children from school. By meeting families where they are already going to be, the School Markets eliminate many of the barriers that can prevent families from participating in other food programs, such as lack of time or embarrassment.
The organization’s innovative Family Meals program re-purposes prepared foods that would otherwise be discarded into single-serving meals. Food For Free collects surplus foods from its corporate partners’, university dining halls, and company cafeterias and then turns this excess food into frozen heat-and-eat, microwavable meals. The meals are delivered to local community college and other locations for students struggling with hunger while trying to learn, families sheltered in hotels without access to kitchens, families with young children that can’t afford to put dinner on the table, and other populations that face barriers to cooking for themselves. In the three years since the Family Meals program launched, Food for Free has more than doubled the amount of meals produced annually, with an estimated 30,000 meals to be distributed in 2019.
Food For Free’s corporate partners are key to its School Programs’ success. Over ten universities and school systems donate surplus food to Food For Free, including Harvard, Tufts, MIT and Needham Public Schools. Other corporate partners provide grants and other financial assistance to fund Food For Free’s School Programs.
In Massachusetts, approximately 652,000 people struggle with hunger, and more than 167,000 of those individuals are children. “Breaking the hunger/poverty cycle requires a dedicated and multi-pronged approach with every member of the community working toward a solution,” continued Purpura. “By partnering with the educational institutions and socially conscious businesses in our state, we can work towards a day when the abundance of available food makes it into the hands of the people who need it.”
ABOUT FOOD FOR FREE
Food For Free is a Cambridge-based, non-profit organization dedicated to providing the Greater Boston community with reliable access to fresh and nutritious food. Food For Free accomplishes its mission through food rescue, partnerships with schools, colleges and traditional food organizations, and our own direct service programs. Last year, Food For Free distributed more than two million pounds of nutritious food to more than 30,000 people throughout Greater Boston. To learn more, please visit us at http://www.foodforfree.org/, or follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
