Watanda: This local scheme helped struggling Nigerian Muslims end Ramadan fasting with feasts

Through volunteers and partnerships with other local organizations, the Sisters of St. Joseph Neighborhood Center distributes a month’s worth of food to families in need for free, as a large portion of the population is undocumented, unemployed, or otherwise ineligible for government assistance. The Center also provides services such as English language classes, a clothes closet, a diaper bank and assistance getting a driver’s license.

The BC Farmer’s Market Nutrition Coupon Program in British Columbia, Canada, provides lower-income families and seniors with coupons to purchase food at farmer’s markets. The program improves food security by ensuring more people have access to fresh, healthy food and supporting local farmers.

In the district of Bijapur, a town in India, there was a malnutrition rate of 40 per cent in 2019. In order to tackle the problem officials identified the areas with high malnutrition and directed their efforts to those places. They introduced nutrient rich millets in child care centers. They also created kitchen gardens to provide the community with access to fresh vegetables. Finally, they brought Nutrient Rehabilitation Centers in the community since parents were hesitant to take their children to them. Two years later, malnutrition rates dropped by 12 percent.

Muslim civic advocacy groups Emgage and Ismailis Rise Up have partnered to engage a more diverse Muslim population in the 2020 election. They added thousands of contacts among new Muslim voters in six states, trained volunteers in electoral organizing and countering voter suppression, use personal connections to encourage people to vote, and will staff the Election Protection Hotline, where voters can get help in their native language. They also published videos about voter registration and mail-in voting in languages commonly spoken by Ismaili families and held virtual events aimed at mobilizing seniors.

Brown's Super Stores operates seven profitable supermarkets in traditionally food desert neighborhoods in Philadelphia. The founder says it's because they brought together a group of community leaders and asked them exactly what they were looking for in a neighborhood grocery store, and used the information to truly create a space for the broader community that often includes health care clinics, banking services, event space, and more.

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.

In the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, several community-led organizations are joining forces to help those in need by gathering and distributing supply donations and helping those affected apply for FEMA assistance, unemployment and other relief support.

FoodCommune aims to reduce food waste by rescuing food before it ends up in landfills, redistributing about 6,000 pounds of food per week. FoodCommune gathers food from farmer’s markets, grocery stores, restaurants and other sources, redistributing enough to feed about 300 people each week.

Café Justo offers an alternative model to traditional fair-trade operations, keeping the entire means of coffee production in the farmers’ hands. They connect the farmer directly to the consumer, eliminating the need for people in the middle who would often gather up the profits. In Salvador Urbina, the Café Justo cooperative has about 80 farming families and sends out more than 1,000 pounds of coffee a month.

Mobile homeowners are buying the land their homes are on to form resident-owned cooperatives so they can upgrade infrastructure faster. This allows them to combat and adapt to climate change by installing things like solar panels and drainage systems.