UK food bank users swap face scans for free food

Communities in Puerto Rico developed locally-run resilience hubs that combine community kitchens, food stockpiling, and disaster preparedness infrastructure, successfully serving thousands of meals during events like Hurricane Fiona and providing year-round food security while reducing dependence on delayed government aid.

The CalFresh Fruit and Vegetable EBT Pilot Program rewards healthy shopping choices with a dollar-for-dollar instant rebate at participating grocery stores. 74,000 people in 44 of California’s 58 counties benefit from the program.

People living in food deserts have very limited access to healthy food, prompting 'Green Carts' (street vendors with vegetables and fruits) and other mobile markets to pop up. Critically important to the success of these markets is their provision of Electronic Benefits Transfer machines to allow customers to pay with their Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) food stamps.

To combat hunger and malnutrition, Digital Green, an N.G.O., is creating and delivering videos about cheap, innovative farming techniques that can substantially increase small farmers' production of staple foods in India, Ghana, and Ethiopia.

Atlanta's city government used public real estate, favorable financing, and a quasi-public development authority to open a privately-operated grocery store in a downtown food desert within nine months, serving more than 150,000 customers with prices matched to Kroger and generating nearly 20% revenue growth.

The SHARE program, a food recovery initiative created by Toward Zero Waste and Wake County Public Schools, redirects unopened cafeteria items onto accessible carts and fridges for any student to take throughout the school day. SHARE has grown from 8 to 37 schools since the spring of 2025 and recovers roughly 41 food items per school per day, reducing landfill waste and de-stigmatizing food support.

Using a strategy called equitable food-oriented development, Project New Village operates a solar-powered mobile farmers market, community garden, and backyard growers' network in Southeast San Diego, which has been serving residents with affordable fresh produce since 2022.

Gleaning organizations across the U.S. collect surplus food from farms, grocery stores, and markets that would otherwise go to waste, then distribute it through free-food markets and food banks to address both food insecurity and environmental harm in their communities.

In the United Kingdom, the supermarket Iceland Foods gives out interest-free microloans on pre-loaded cards during school holidays for families to spread out their grocery bills over time when finances are most stretched. The program also reduces pressure on food banks that are already struggling to meet demand.

The Maryland Department of Information Technology adapted an existing system to quickly distribute small-business grants and loans due to Covid-19. The Maryland OneStop platform, a single site for state licenses, permits, and certifications, was built with an agile approach decoupling front-end user experience from the back-end where the program does the work, which allowed quick front end modifications to launch the loan and grants online when coronavirus hit. The system processed 18,000 applications in the first 3 days and 56,000 within a month. The success was preceded by many years of planning and work.