Coming out of Covid, many food banks that benefitted from pandemic-era giving and extra government aid directed more funding toward employees, particularly to lift the pay of low-wage workers (see our story here). A few years later, outside aid is now harder to come by, but the work to ensure a…
Posts published in “Equity”
It’s one thing for a food bank to say it’s going to get involved in the food justice movement. It’s another to actually do it. Alameda County Community Food Bank made a definitive move into food justice when it agreed to invest between $2 million and $2.5 million per year…
Manna Food Center’s paper-based system for helping people purchase food at local markets is not very sophisticated, but gets points for innovation. Since the pandemic, Silver Spring, Md.-based Manna has been distributing paper vouchers to hundreds of people monthly, who can use them to purchase culturally relevant food at small…
Without input from the community, the renovation of Akron-Canton Regional Food Bank’s main warehouse, unveiled last week, probably would have turned out a little differently. In improving the warehouse, the food bank employed the same strategy it had when it constructed a brand new warehouse in another location in 2021.…
Gleaners Food Bank of Indiana has joined the growing number of food banks that are lifting pay, ensuring everyone in the organization is earning a living wage. Gleaners announced in May that it has been certified as providing a minimum starting wage of at least $18 an hour, the designated…
When Eloise’s Cooking Pot started a program to purchase produce from local BIPOC farmers and producers, it didn’t take long to identify a slew of challenges in those working relationships. While the farms produced food that was unparalleled in quality and rich in cultural relevance, they often struggled with practices…
Beyond Hunger in Chicago has become the first food pantry in the nation to take part in the Good Food Purchasing Program, an initiative that prioritizes values over low cost when making food purchases. The premise behind the program is that an entire ecosystem exists behind the food that communities…
Equity can be an abstract idea, but California’s Alameda County Community Food Bank has found a concrete way to put it into practice. The process began some two-and-a-half years ago, amid the pandemic and the start of a nationwide racial reckoning, when the food bank began examining how it could…
At a time when many food banks were scrambling to add extra warehouse space to meet the demands of the pandemic, Food Lifeline in Seattle found itself with an unexpected gift: lots and lots of extra warehouse space. A tenant had moved out, leaving behind 80,000 square feet of space…