Fall may be Food For Free’s busiest season. The Cambridge and Somerville Weekend Backpack Programs and School Markets are back in session. Our Food Rescue program gets busier, especially with regard to prepared foods, as university dining halls kick back into high gear with their own production, and therefore their donations. Farmers’ Markets reach their peak, with cases of donated apples filling our coolers to capacity.

And, of course, then there’s Thanksgiving, which marks the busiest week of the year for Food For Free’s operations team. Ryan and his team delivered over 100,000 pounds of food in the week prior to the holiday.

Some highlights:

School Markets

Fiona and her team launched a new school market at Cambridge’s Fletcher Maynard Academy in October. School Markets make it easy for parents to supplement their food budgets without having to add an extra trip—to a food pantry, for example—to their already busy weeks. As a bonus, they give teachers another opportunity to connect with families. Food For Free holds these markets at eight Cambridge schools, working in partnership with school staff. The Cambridge Chronicle gave the new market some nice coverage here.

Backpack Programs

Our Backpack Programs are back up and running in 25 schools in Cambridge and Somerville, serving about 900 students this year.

Boston25News came to visit the Somerville Backpack Program last week and spoke with Sasha about our work. 

Life Science Cares is wrapping up—pun intended—a big backpack food and gift card drive for the Somerville Weekend Backpack Program this month, with 20 companies donating. The grocery gift cards donated will help participating families to cover their food costs over the schools’ December breaks, when the absence of school food programs can make a painful dent in families’ food budgets.

Field of Greens

Field of Greens wrapped up for the year in November, having harvested 5,080 pounds of beautiful, organic vegetables for Pine Street Inn’s guests and culinary arts students. Lindentree Farm added another 1,948 pounds of their own crops to this, bringing our total donation to Pine Street Inn to 7,028 pounds—about 28,000 servings of veggies!

Our thanks goes to late-season volunteer groups from Akamai and Fay School for helping us wrap up the season

Family Meals

Kyle and her volunteers have been cranking out the meals over at the Biogen kitchen. We’ve recently started bringing meals to Massasoit Community College, Community Action Agency of Somerville, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Elementary School, in Cambridge, and Eliot Community Human Services, in Everett. We hope to start bringing meals to Pine Street Inn soon.

None of this would happen without the many volunteers who show up each week to package meals. We are so grateful for the wonderful corporate volunteer groups who have joined us this fall, including:

• Akamai
• Biogen
• Blue Cross Blue Shield
• Freedom Trail Financial
• Life Science Cares
• Takeda
• Tech Gives Back
• Verily

Home Delivery for the Holidays

Home Delivery brings food to chronically ill seniors and people with disabilities—people who might otherwise use food pantries, but who aren’t physically capable of getting to one. Our Home Delivery clients are typically extremely low income and often quite isolated. Fiona, Sarah, Simon, and Jill work hard to make sure that our holiday deliveries always include some special treats to remind our clients that their community is thinking of them. This year’s pre-Thanksgiving delivery included festive placemats created by Kennedy-Longfellow School students, as well as butter and sparkling cider.

New Staff

You may have noticed some staff changes here at Food For Free. We’re saying goodbye to Christine, Kyle, and Sarah while we welcome Meghan, Sara, and Tim.

Tim Hoang joined us as Operations Manager on December 4. He comes to us from California where he worked with a number of different non-profits. Tim is going to be a great addition to the Operations Team, and Ryan is particularly excited to bring him on board.

Meghan Glass just started last week, replacing Kyle Ahlers as Family Meals Program Coordinator. Welcome, Meghan!

Finally, Sara Kimmel has joined the Development team, replacing Christine Savage at Development Assistant. You can expect to see her at events starting in the new year.

Grants

And, of course, none of our work would be possible without the generous support of our donors and funders. The fall season has brought funding from:

• Blue Cross Blue Shield Healthy Living Accelerator, to expand Family Meals
• Cabot Family Charitable Trust, for Food Rescue
• Joy in Childhood Foundation, for the Somerville Weekend Backpack Program
• Emergency Food and Shelter Program, for Home Delivery
• Life Science Cares, to support a truck and driver which will allow us to expand School Markets next year
• Roy A Hunt Foundation, for Food Rescue
• Taste of Cambridge, for Food Rescue

Our Winter Appeal is ongoing. If you’d like to support us, you can do that here.

As you can see, it took many hands to get us through the season. We’re grateful to all of our food donors, distribution partners, volunteers—both individual and corporate, and funders. Thank you all for bringing good food to our community!