🌙 Ramadan Special Food Distribution
Serving our community with care and compassion.
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I'm starting up a Food Rescue program in my town.

The idea is that restaurants and stores throw away good food every night. Food rescue (also known as "gleaning") is where a person (Food Rescue Hero or Gleaner) goes to stores/restaurants and takes the good food that would otherwise be thrown out and provides it to hungry folks (either distributed centrally through a food pantry, decentrally through a free fridge / community pantry, or peer-to-peer directly to a person or family).

I'm currently researching tracking and coordination apps (such as foodrescue.us and others) but in the process of doing this I found myself at a local donut shop asking if they had 5-gallon food safe buckets that they could give away for hydroponics (i had received a tip!). They said they did and we started talking about food rescue. They said they had tried to donate their unsold donuts to a couple of pantries but no one could ever pick them up. I told them I would.

...and look what they provided!!!

My first food rescue, y'all!!!

3 dozen donuts!

I ran them straight to the free fridge! They can do this every night!!!

So cheers to Freddy Donuts in Fredericksburg, Virginia!

#foodRescue #freeFridge #communityPantry #foodSecurity #mutualAid #solarPunk

Ok. Now that the seed library is built, I'm moving on to the next project.

Food Rescue.

Currently, I volunteer at my local community refrigerator and pantry....

....and by that I mean a literal refrigerator and pantry that sits outside.

Anyone can come up to it and put food in. And anyone can come up to it and take food out. No means testing. Mutual aid. Give a food, take a food.

Right now, it's being stocked with individual donations (people buying extra food while doing their own grocery runs or putting in extra food that they thought they were going to use but ended up not using all of it), overflow from food pantry distributions, and home garden and hydroponics for fresh produce.

That's great and I want to expand that, especially the home garden and hydroponics for fresh produce (see the Seed Library and hydroponics bin build pinned posts for efforts in that area).

All of that said, my local town is not doing a lot of food rescue.

We have grocery stores, convenience stores, and restaurants throwing away good food at the end of the day.

I want to get that food away from the dumpsters and into the community fridge / pantry.

So that's my next project. And I'll document it here. (I swear at some point, I'll put all of this together up on hacker(dot)solar - I just really suck at that. I don't know why.)

I'm currently looking at foodrescue(dot)us 's web app for food rescue coordination. It costs money, but I'm not sure how much. I'll find out and let y'all know.

I'll start with grocery stores. Then convenience stores. Then finally hot food from restaurants.

Cool thing. A lot of people worry about liability issues. That's not a thing anymore!!!

In the US, we have the Bill Emerson Food Donation Act that removes liability from donators, gleaners (food rescuers), and distributors:

"The Bill Emerson Food Donation Act establishes Federal protection from civil and criminal liability for persons involved in the donation and distribution of food and grocery products to needy individuals when certain criteria are met. In order to receive protection under the Act, a person or gleaner must donate in good faith apparently wholesome food or apparently fit grocery products to a nonprofit organization for ultimate distribution to needy individuals. The Act also provides protection against civil and criminal liability to the nonprofit organizations that receive such donated items in good faith. "

See FAQ here (PDF): https://www.usda.gov/sites/default/files/documents/usda-good-samaritan-faqs.pdf

Ideally, I'll be able to keep our fridge stocked with this and even start building out other fridges/pantries throughout town.

Heck, Richmond Virginia has FOURTEEN free fridges!!! We're not as big a town as they are, but we can do better than one!

#solarPunk #mutualAid #foodRescue #freeFridge #communityPantry

What does it take for a cucumber to become a pickle?
A jarring experience.

https://localfoodconnect.org.au/

#localfood #ediblegardens #communitypantry #foodswap

So hydroponics are kicking off (as well as soil container gardens, backyard gardens, and community plot gardens) with me and my friends....

....and with that now is a good time to emphasize that this is not just a hobby (or a hobby at all for some). It's easy. sure. And takes little time, money, and effort... and is fun... and calming... don't get me wrong.

But we're not doing this for shits and giggles.

This is one part of a larger effort at bringing about post-scarcity food. (Note: One part. No one thing is a panacea.)

So right now, we have efforts to garden (hydroponically or otherwise) for one's self and one's family. That's good. It either supplements or fully replaces a corporate grocery store. Great.

But it's only part of it.

The next part is mutual aid. When we plant food, we also plant for our neighbors and greater community. For every 5 plants I harvest, I give away at least 1 plant. At least 20 percent. The question then becomes, how do we get the food out. How do we distribute it?

Food banks are fine. They're already set up. Many accept home grown produce. The issue with food banks is they are often means tested. You have to prove you NEED the food before you get it. That has a shit ton of issues and often just means that people who are hungry don't get to eat.

Instead of food banks, I've been using two solutions to distribute food.

1) The Olio App ( https://olioapp.com/en/ ): The Olio App let's you list your produce online. Folks can then request the item and arrange for pickup. It's like craiglist and uber eats and specifically is about giving away free food.

2) Community Fridges / Community Pantries ( https://freedge.org/locations/ ): Free fridges and pantries are physical nodes in your community where folks that have extra food, put it in the pantry. Folks that need food, take it out. Give a food, take a food. No need for apps, low overhead, works really well and is efficient.

The key to all of this is it's NOT charity. This is MUTUAL aid. You give AND you take. As we produce for ourselves we also produce for our neighbors. Everyone eats.

#solarpunk #mutualAid #freeFridge #communityPantry #hydroponics #postScarcity

Just walked by (what appears to be a new) community fridge and pantry on Maclaren between Bank and Kent.

Anyone know who it's being operated by? (Update see comments below)

#ottawa #CommunityFridge #CommunityPantry

"Carceral and Colonial Memory During Pandemic Times in the Philippines: A long letter of solidarity from the diaspora" - Dada Docot
https://doi.org/10.26686/ce.v4i1.7089
#anthropology #aiart #midjourney

#CommunityPantry #CommunityPantryPH #MutualAid #SolidarityMovement #COVID19 #Philippines

Somebody asked: how do get to nearby #communityPantry stops curated by #SaanYanPH volunteers with #OpenStreetMap apps?

With OSM data, it will use routable bike lanes whenever possible, and will create an optimal route for cyclists, not for a motorist.

For detailed instructions, see: https://hackmd.io/aW8mju6YSZK8lTVcOx1l-A?view

Sa Ontario, Canada nagsetup sila ng police-enfoced lockdown dahil daw sa "COVID concerns". Nasa gitna ng paglilitis ang pumatay kay George Floyd noon.

Takot silang kumalat ang kilos protesta sa kanila. Katapat lang ng Canada ang Minnesota.

Sounds familiar? #CommunityPantry