Mutual aid groups rushed to the rescue during COVID-19

A community effort to help provide food to those who are food insecure during the pandemic has brought together local bakers to bake bread for food banks. The initiative, known as Community Loaves, has amassed 700 volunteers and donated 15,000 loaves to 11 food pantries across the Seattle area, and is now also gaining momentum in Oregon.

With COVID-19 causing the shuttering of restaurants around the country, the Minnesota Central Kitchen collaboration brings together furloughed chefs – and their restaurants’ ingredients – to help feed those experiencing food insecurity. Participating restaurants and organizations pooled together their resources, spaces, and ingredients to make over 2,000 meals each week. Participants include volunteers and paid individuals, keeping 120 food service workers employed.

Supply chains have been disrupted with the restrictions imposed by the Coronavirus pandemic, and farmers are suffering from a lack of buying customers. Meanwhile, food banks are in dire straits as more and more people seek support after losing jobs to the pandemic. What's needed? A middle man. This article looks at a range of solutions across the United States in which organizations and community groups are stepping up to fill the gap between the two needs. They largely do this by purchasing, packaging, and distributing surplus product to local food banks who need more donations for the community.

A village in Germany has implemented a local hotline for at-risk community members to use if they need help obtaining essentials during the coronavirus pandemic. The group of volunteers managing the hotline work under the guidance of a doctor to make sure they're reducing risk to themselves and those they're serving.

To help mitigate the impacts of the coronavirus pandemic on some of its most vulnerable populations, the city of Cambridge, Massachusetts, is paying otherwise closed restaurants to make food for short-staffed homeless shelters in the area.

When the Bay Area issued a shelter-in-place order as a response to containing the spread of COVID-19, businesses had to adapt. From a local distillery creating hand sanitizer at cost, to a restaurant offering groceries, to a catering business selling drive-through meals, local businesses have gotten creative to maintain revenue and pay employees.

In the UK, mutual aid groups are popping up to deliver food and medical supplies to those who can't leave their homes as a result of the rapidly spreading COVID-19. Organizers are keeping the efforts local to limit the possibility of transmission through these activities.

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic making access to groceries more difficult, The Walker River Paiute Tribe created a food pantry to support members of the tribe and local farmers. The food pantry has since become the largest in the state, by volume of distributed food, having distributed about 6,500 bags of food to over 355 households.

The Farmers to Family program, an initiative from the U.S Department of Agriculture set aside $3 billion for its Farmers to Families Food Box program, part of the Coronavirus Food Assistance Program. The program awarded contracts farmers and distributors to provide food for families experiencing food insecurity. The article lays out some of the challenges with the program like issues with how the contracts were awarded, difficulty coordinating between distributors and farmers, stringent requirements, as well as the quick, creative solutions that were deployed to overcome them.

Organizations across the country are working to address food insecurity among Asian Americans, an issue that was exacerbated by COVID-19 related job losses. Groups such as VietAid in Boston and the Southeast Asian Mutual Assistance Associations Coalition in Philadelphia provide free groceries, hot meals, and other assistance to those in need. The local organizations are also a source of assistance for people who do not have documentation and they provide services and help navigating local bureaucracies in many languages and dialects, which can be a barrier for some within Asian American communities.