Underground food distributions, direct financial assistance, and postings on WhatsApp are some of the ways food banks are reaching out to undocumented clients, a population that has been particularly hard hit by the coronavirus crisis. The efforts are designed to combat the chilling effects of the current administration’s immigration policies,…
Posts published in “Strategy”
When demand for charitable food ratcheted up in the early stages of the pandemic, San Diego Food Bank responded like many of its peers — with mass distributions aimed at getting food to hundreds or even thousands of people at a time. But the results of those efforts did not…
When the Food Bank of Western Massachusetts took a hard look at food distribution across its four-county network a few years ago, one thing became strikingly clear: access to emergency food was not equitable, and the reason was race. The county with the largest concentration of food insecurity, poverty and…
Second Harvest Heartland of Minnesota and others are proving that a food bank does not necessarily need a kitchen to play a major role in distributing thousands of freshly prepared meals. Using Feeding America’s MealConnect platform, Second Harvest Heartland is sourcing large donations of bulk food and guiding it toward…
Ever since it merged with a restaurant serving free community meals a year and a half ago, Feeding Tampa Bay envisioned that meal preparation would be a bigger part of its future. Suddenly, that future is here. In response to the pandemic, the food bank is now coordinating the production…
A quick look at the home page of Yolo Food Bank’s website underscores a main mission of its Covid-19 response: to get food to the elderly and vulnerable who are stuck at home. In stepping up to meet the needs of low-income quarantined individuals, Yolo is taking on one of…
With about one-third of the food pantries across Toronto having closed, Daily Bread Food Bank has begun distributing food from public libraries, taking advantage of their book-processing center, trucks and temporarily out-of-work librarians. Four libraries have begun distributing food and a total of nine are expected to, thanks to partnerships…
After 15 years at the aid organization CARE, where he confronted conflict, earthquakes, tsunamis and other disasters, Thomas Reynolds, the CEO of Northwest Harvest in Seattle, understood the “absolute” importance of being prepared for the Covid-19 virus. So early on, he did what you do in these situations and devised…
Jon Stepanian had some great ideas about how to impose social distancing at the five large weekly food distributions he oversees throughout Long Island and Brooklyn, including having clients show up within certain time periods, depending on their age. Those good intentions, however, have not necessarily translated into streamlined distributions…