LYNN — The statewide anti-hunger organization Project Bread provided the Lynn-based non-profit The Food Project with $6,500 in project-based grant funding so that they can expand efforts to combat food insecurity in the region.
The Food Project, which has received approximately $50,000 in grant funding from Project Bread for more than two years, hires young people to grow, harvest, and distribute organic produce throughout the region.
In a recent partnership with KIPP Academy, a group of public charter schools serving K-12 students and their families across two campuses in the city, The Food Project is developing a mass-scale food education program to provide cooking classes, information on SNAP and HIP benefits, and fresh vegetables to community members.
“We aim to build a community rooted in health, cultural sharing and a joy in cooking that will support families in gaining access to the foods that will nourish them physically, emotionally and culturally,” said Food Project Regional Director Ludia Modi in a written statement. “These cooking classes will weave issues of food access, food security, and delicious, healthy cooking into the strong social fabric that the KIPP Academy has already built amongst its families, and we’re excited to partner with this committed school community.”
Project Bread’s Director of Community Partnerships Adriana Mendes-Sheldon said in an interview Monday that the organization’s project-based funding program intends to fund programs that engage local communities with their goals of ending hunger. She said that The Food Project’s partnership with KIPP Academy was exactly the kind of program Project Bread sought to support.
“We believe that family engagement is very important for children’s development […] when a child’s hungry, they’re not going to be able to learn, it doesn’t matter how many millions of dollars we spend on education,” Mendes-Sheldon said. “We see this as a tremendous opportunity, because The Food Project is addressing an issue of food insecurity, through family engagement in a culturally responsive way by providing the ability for families to come and cook meals together.”
Mendes-Sheldon added that since the pandemic, food insecurity has worsened throughout the state. She cited information from the U.S. Census Pulse Survey indicating that one in every five families with children do not know where their next meal will come from. Among racial minority families, one in three households are food insecure. She said that there’s no reason for hunger to continue in a first-world country.
“Hunger, it’s an injustice. In this day and age in our country, we shouldn’t be seeing this amount of families facing food insecurity anymore. We have resources in the state of Massachusetts, we have resources in the United States of America, hunger should not exist,” Mendes-Sheldon said.
Project Bread CEO Erin McAleer said that with the organization’s project-based funding program, Project Bread aims to support the creation of spaces for community conversations and engagement around food access. She cited the Food Project as an organization that works locally to tackle a statewide problem.
“Connecting people with sustainable solutions not only brings immediate relief, it also provides agency and empowers people in the long term. We learned that solutions must come from the people closest to the problem,” McAleer said. “We continue to learn from and invest in our community partners because of their strength in creating local, sustainable solutions. Supporting our community partners, like The Food Project, is one of our key strategies for ending hunger statewide.”
Anthony Cammalleri can be reached at [email protected]
