Second Harvest Heartland of Minnesota announced last week that it would invest $13.2 million into smoothing out racial disparities in the way it distributes food, partly by making food more accessible and appealing to communities of color. The commitment, which will roll out over five years, covers a wide breadth…
Posts published in “Equity”
CUMAC’s two-story facility in Northern New Jersey has the look and feel of a standard food bank, with a warehouse, a handful of trucks, a client-choice pantry, and even a small garden. In practice, the operation has a mission that goes much further than giving out food or even addressing…
Given the history of food banks, it would seem that those in the U.S. would have little to learn from their global counterparts. Food banks started as an American invention of the 1960s, and did not really spread abroad until the founding of the Global FoodBanking Network in 2006. Despite…
When it comes to serving the Muslim community, one of the difficulties food pantries face is sourcing halal meat. Halal, a word meaning “permissible” in Arabic, requires animals to be slaughtered and processed in a certain way under supervision. Halal rules also prohibit certain foods, such as pork, ban the…
Among the insights revealed by a new tool that shows how racism affects food insecurity is that Black Americans in Midwest metropolitan areas are more likely than those in the South to suffer from food insecurity. Feeding America collaborated with Tableau to publish “Identifying Racism in the Drivers of Food…
In many communities around the country, equitable access to food often has less to do with opening a food pantry and more with starting a garden. As the pandemic steers the national conversation around food insecurity to include the importance of nutrition and the impact of race on hunger, more…
The Greater Chicago Food Depository is redefining itself. The nation’s 12th-largest food bank is in the beginning stages of a multi-year, multi-tiered strategy aimed at building connections with community groups that have deep roots in the city’s most vulnerable neighborhoods. The goal is to transfer power and resources to grassroots…
Although Good Shepherd Food Bank has long served diverse communities across Maine, it wasn’t until Covid-19 hit that the organization realized how much variety there was in the food its clients wanted – and how little of that variety it provided. The problem became apparent when fears about how the…
Some food banks, recognizing the heavy burdens faced by some LGBTQ people, are taking extra steps to help this population feel welcome at food distributions. The LGBTQ community faces a food insecurity rate of 27%, according to an April report from The Williams Institute, a researcher on gender identity law.…