Regardless of what the calendar says, it’s officially summer at Food For Free. Chip Pimlott started in May as this season’s Farm Manager at Field of Greens, and Tisch Summer Fellow intern Cormac McAdams started in early June.
The big news around here is the launch of Family Meals new kitchen at Biogen’s Kendall Square headquarters. We’re excited about the room for growth this kitchen creates. It offers the capacity to deliver over 100,000 meals each year, and to prevent 64,000 pounds of food waste. Read the Boston Globe’s coverage here.
Now that we have the space to ramp up meal production, we’re actively seeking new distribution partners. Our newest Family Meals recipient is Just-A-Start’s YouthBuild program, a youth development program for 16 to 24 year-olds that provides education, career exploration, and life skills training. Though Just-a-Start has been a Food Rescue recipient for many years, the program began taking meals just this month.
Events and presentations
Spring was busy with conferences, fundraisers, and other events.
Sasha participated in a panel at Harvard’s Small Change Big Impact Food Summit on April 4.
Fiona attended the Voices of Hunger on Campus: Changing the Paradigm conference on May 31. Hosted at UMass Lowell, this conference focused on food security issues in higher education. Fiona also represented Food For Free as a panelist at the 4th Annual MYP (Middle Years Programme) New England IB Student Conference on May 19. This year’s theme was “Fighting Food Insecurity.”
June 5, we participated in WBUR’s “The Future of Food” event at CitySpace.
Hope to see you this summer! If you missed us at RiverFest, you can catch us at the Harvard University Farmers Market on June 25 or August 20, or at a July Wellness Wednesday at Workbar (date to be determined.)
A Great Fathers’ Day
The Comedy Studio hosted a Festival of DadJokes to benefit Food For Free on Father’s Day, June 16. It was a fun event, and to our surprise and delight, tickets sold out! We hope to do it again next year. Thank you, Kirsten, Rick, and everyone at The Comedy Studio!
Grants
We are thrilled to share that Social Venture Partners Boston selected Food For Free as a spring grantee.
Other recent grants include funding from:
- Agnes M. Lindsay Trust and from Cambridge Dept. of Public Health, both for IT and food safety improvements that support all of our programs
- Biogen, for the Cambridge Weekend Backpack Program
- Cambridge’s Community Development Block Grant Program—a grant for Food Rescue and one for Home Delivery
- Emergency Food and Shelter Program, for Home Delivery
- Liberty Mutual (the second year of a two-year grant) for Food Rescue
