Program addresses food insecurity, teaches kitchen skills to children

Farm stands operating on sliding-scale and pay-what-you-can models are improving access to fresh, healthy food in communities battling poverty and food insecurity. In these models, residents who can afford to pay full price are subsidizing some of the costs for residents who cannot. The rest of the funding comes from a patchwork of support.

The Wildwood School District has implemented programs during and after school hours to help provide nutritious meals to students living with hunger and poverty, while also teaching the children invaluable skills such as sewing and gardening to help create better future opportunities.

The Umayya Danejo Foundation provides financial support to help out-of-school children enroll in classes and complete exit examinations. The organization also runs a food aid program and has a partnership with tailoring centers where students can learn hands-on trade skills.

Community networks acted to keep people in Kashmir fed throughout COVID-19 restrictions and lockdowns. The Bonamsar mosque provides donation-funded monthly meal kits and small cash payments to people in need, including cooked food for those in immediate need. Tiffin Aaw provided meals to residents during political turmoil and shifted to serving warm meals to COVID-19 patients and their medical and family caregivers that couldn’t afford food. Both services included the culturally traditional food that has led the region to have the country’s highest nutritional health.

Jubilee Market is a non-profit grocery store that provides affordable and nutritious foods in low-income neighborhoods. This community-based grocery store caters to the unique cultural needs of the community and helps to improve the overall neighborhood and quality of life.

Urban Tilth, an urban farm in California, is providing food directly to communities in need and upending the traditional food supply chain so they can help people access healthy and sustainably-grown food. They have been providing local organic food to 190 families financially impacted by COVID-19, almost six times more food they’ve distributed since the pandemic began.

For several years, the Urban Growers Collective in Illinois has been helping to bring and distribute healthy food to underresourced communities throughout Chicago by operating eight urban farms, but efforts have increased during the COVID-19 pandemic. In just over six months, the organization has "delivered nearly one million pounds of produce to more than 25 partner organizations across the city."

Produce prescription programs across the United States are seeing a resurgence in activity due to the COVID-19 pandemic. These programs provide healthy foods at a subsidized price to patients with chronic health issues. For example, the VeggieRx program in Chicago used to give out up to 70 boxes of fruits and veggies a week, but now they’re up to 160 boxes a week. While studies have shown that these programs can have a positive impact on patients' health, insurance companies usually only pay for patients to participate in them for a short period of time, so the health benefits might be limited.

The ability of community gardens to supply healthy food to those who might not have their basic needs met has grown in importance as coronavirus continues to spread across the United States. For example, the New Roots community gardening initiative in Salt Lake City helps nearly 150 refugee families raise food on plots, and about 86 percent of the gardeners report saving an average of $30 a week by growing their own food. However, the future of this program, and others around the country in New York City, Seattle, and Minneapolis, are uncertain as they face budget cuts from cities amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, small farmers in Michigan are coming up with different business models in order to get their produce into consumers’ hands. Fisheye Farms in Detroit created a community-supported agriculture, or CSA, subscription program. However, the program is only meeting approximately one-third of its necessary finances, and they hope to find a balance with other offerings. Argus Farm Stop in Ann Arbor quickly turned their online store into a popular digital farmers market, increasing its customers from eight to 2,500.