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Feeding Richmond: How Community Fridges Tackle Food Insecurity

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Taylor Scott had a problem. The 2019 Virginia Commonwealth University graduate had begun growing vegetables in her apartment and she had a surplus. 

“I [needed] to get rid of these tomatoes, and I [didn’t] know where to put them,” Scott said. 

She was sharing this problem with a friend back in her hometown of New Orleans, Louisiana. Her friend asked why Scott didn’t put the extra vegetables in local community fridges, speaking of a project that has grown from grassroots efforts in many cities across the country, New Orleans included. 

Since no community fridges were established in Richmond over the three years Scott had been living in the city, she couldn’t. But the question stuck in her mind and she wondered, if she took the plunge and started a community fridge project, would anyone else take it with her? 

A small group chat of Scott’s personal friends revealed the resounding answer of “yes!” And thus, the RVA Community Fridges project was born as a response to the problem of food insecurity in Richmond. 

A Need In Richmond

“The majority of people that food banks serve do have jobs or income, it’s just not enough,” said Eddie Oliver. 

Oliver is the executive director of the Federation of Virginia Food Banks, a state association working with the Commonwealth’s food banks. The Federation supports Feed More, a nonprofit that provides perishable and pantry foods to people in the Richmond area.

Feed More reports that 11% of the central Virginian population is food insecure. This equates to 165,000 people, or one in nine individuals. Feed More also reports that 70% of the food insecure people they serve are having to make tough choices every day between food and fixed costs like housing, utilities, and transportation expenses. 

Apollo Montogomery [not their real name], a local to Richmond who prefers to remain anonymous as a result of recent online harassment and who works as a camera operator for events, makes these tough choices every month. “The rising cost of food, in general, has really hurt my wallet,” Montgomery, whose recent job change has left them living paycheck to paycheck, said. “Every month I’m having to choose between food or bills.” 

To make sure they have enough food each month, Montgomery uses the RVA Community Fridges. 

“Sometimes it’s a crapshoot, sometimes items are past their sell-by date,” they said. 

Still, Montgomery finds the fridges to be a helpful resource. “With the rising cost of food, more people ought to shed the ‘I don’t need help’ thing and utilize the resources that exist,” they said. 

A man on a bike stops out front of the Hot Pink Hotelina fridge on Venable Street. Image courtesy of VPM.org.

How it Works

The RVA Community Fridges are household or industrial refrigerators set up outside of a host business. Host businesses, which commonly include restaurants, non-profit organizations, and churches, are needed to run electricity to the fridges. There are 10 fridges in Richmond and Petersburg. 

Host businesses can be nominated by someone in the community or can nominate themselves. The RVA Community Fridge administration team might also contact a business directly. 

Once a location is set, a fridge needs to be acquired. People from the community have both donated fridges and purchased new fridges.

Once the new fridge is set up, it’s time to paint it. The idea to paint the fridges came from the original meeting when Scott and her small group of friends decided to launch the project. Artist Hotpinkhotel was on the first call and asked if they could paint the first fridge, lovingly known as Hot Pink Hoteliana. The action just stuck. Now, either the host business can provide its own artists, or RVA Community Fridges will provide an artist who has submitted an application with an original design. 

When the fridge is installed and painted, it’s ready to go.

When Scott and her team began installing fridges around the city, “[the] extension cords were being stolen,” she said. Scott suspects it was for the copper wire, which can be sold for money, but this limitation didn’t derail RVA Community Fridge’s efforts. Now all fridges are equipped with an extension cord cover. 

Anyone can swing by a fridge and take whatever they need, or leave whatever they can. To fill the fridges, a diverse group of community members donates purchased or cooked food. Local businesses and organizations have also partnered with RVA Community Fridges to help stock the fridges.

Many Hands Make Mutual Aid

Like the RVA Community Fridges, many of the organizations that partner with the fridges are mutual aid organizations. Their take-what-you-need, leave-what-you-can approach is a community-based way to take care of one another. 

One of these organizations is Fonticello Food Forest, which runs out of Carter Jones Park. The community garden hosts a free farm stand every Wednesday. In addition to what Fonticello can donate from its own crops, food is donated to the stand from Good Samaritan Ministries, Seasonal Roots, and Feed More. 

“Pretty much all the leftovers are going to the fridges,” said Chloe Tremper, a volunteer for Fonticello. 

After the farmstand ends on Wednesdays, volunteers from the RVA Community Fridges pick up the leftover food and allocate it to the 10 fridges. Tremper has helped in that effort, too. “One time we had too much guacamole, and I drove around to all the fridges,” she said. 

Another partner of the fridges is Happily Natural, a local non-profit that hosts the annual Happily Natural Festival and serves as a steward for many of the urban agriculture greenspaces in Richmond. 

“Happily Natural is a non-profit that serves the community through education and partnering with other organizations to feed people and keep people happily natural. Because food is natural. Hunger is natural. But starvation isn’t,” said Tiffany Bryce, a volunteer with Happily Natural, who helps with Panera pick-ups. 

Bryce picks up two full bags of goods from Panera once a week that are then allocated into the fridges on Dill Avenue, Venable Street, and Mechanicsville Turnpike. 

“What we’re able to put into the fridges varies, because it also depends on what’s in the fridge,” said Bryce. “We may have one day where we’re filling up the entire top shelf, and then another day when we’re kind of modest. There’s a lot of restaurants now getting involved, so if we show up and it’s pretty packed, we leave what we can.” 

One of the restaurants that partners with the RVA Community Fridges is Intergalactic Tacos. They sell a mutual aid box for $6 that will go directly into the fridge that they host on Hull Street. 

Brian Graff, the owner of Intergalactic Tacos, wishes that they would sell more of these meals. “In April we sold two mutual aid boxes,” he said. 

The sales of the food may be low, but Graff and his team donate whatever they can at the end of their workday. They make fresh beans and rice every day, and whatever is left over is packaged into a bowl and put into the Hull Street fridge. 

“We donate about 45 to 50 bowls a week,”  Graff said. “Thirty-five on a slow week.” 

The folks who are participating in this mutual aid say it’s rewarding. “It’s been a beautiful thing to be immersed in the opportunity to give back, because the needs are so great,” Bryce said. “If you are looking for somewhere to serve, and be directly in it,” Bryce said, working with local food security organizations is worth it. 

Fonticello Food Forest’s bulletin board keeps folks apprised of upcoming events. Photo courtesy of R.M. Carkhuff.

‘I would measure a win’

“I spoke to four people today that I’ve never met in my life,” Scott marveled. She met them all by visiting the different fridge sites. 

Even with over 100 volunteers in the RVA Community Fridges group chat, and many more who go uncounted because they aren’t on the social media platform that hosts the chat, Scott finds herself filling up her car and delivering goods to the fridge locations daily. 

“People have literally [told us that] ‘without the fridges over the pandemic we would have really been very hungry.’” This, Scott said, is what leads her to believe the project is working. 

“Seeing the fact that people understand the need for the fridges and want to see more go up, that’s what I think I would measure a win,” she said.

Top Photo: Bags of carrots and onions, and packages of cucumbers and veggie mix spread out on a picnic table at the Fonticello Food Farm free farm stand. These are goods that people will take home, for free. Photo courtesy of R.M. Carkhuff.

Lots Of People At Table To Fight Food Insecurity

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The founders of Fonticello Food Forest bent down under the picnic table to pick edible chickweed leaves and lavender flowers. Moments later they were running to their neighbors’ aid – some of their chickens were loose.

Jameson Price and Laney Sullivan founded the outdoor space, which serves as a free source of fresh and perishable food for community members. The food is donated or grown on site, the pair said. The property is located in Carter Jones Park, south of the James River in Richmond. 

“This is not charity work,” Price said. “This is just work.”

Price and Sullivan are part of a larger effort to mitigate food insecurity and food waste across Virginia. 

Food insecurity means a household lacks access to enough food for a healthy lifestyle, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. An estimated 10% of Virginians were food insecure before the COVID-19 pandemic; that percentage increased to 22% between April and May 2020, according to the Virginia Department of Social Services. 

A sign over a hanging basket reads “VEGGIES FREE.” The basket, while initially filled to the brim with fresh produce, contains only a single onion near the end of the day’s distribution period. Photo by Grace Bost.

Grassroots efforts

Nationally, food insecurity went unchanged at 10.5% between 2019 and 2020, according to the USDA. However, food pantry usage increased between those two years. 

More than 4% of families used food pantries in 2019 and, almost 7% of families reported using a food pantry in 2020, according to USDA. The 2021 data was not available as of mid-April, according to USDA. 

Food pantry usage is higher among those who experience food insecurity, according to USDA. 

Almost half of households who experience very low food insecurity used food pantries in 2020.

Local grocery stores and nonprofit organizations such as Feed More food bank provide food for the Fonticello Food Forest, Price and Sullivan said. They have built contacts with store employees to help acquire leftover food; one method also deployed by the food sharing organization Food Not Bombs where Sullivan also works. 

“We’re trying to go and establish relationships and understanding of what we’re trying to do, and the impact that it’s giving to families and to folks that need the food,” Price said, “Especially as cost continues to rise but waste doesn’t seem to be decreasing.”

Over 816,000 tons of surplus food was sent to the landfill in Virginia in 2019, according to data from ReFED, a nonprofit dedicated to ending food loss and waste across the U.S. That includes food surplus from manufacturing, retail, food service, farming and residential sources. The food that Fonticello Food Forest saves from waste is a tiny piece of the billions of pounds of food thrown away every day, Sullivan said.

“This is not the better world,” Sullivan said. “This is better than it would be if it was all going in the trash, but it’s not the ideal.”

RVA Community Fridges works to increase access to fresh, locally-grown food, according to Taylor Scott, the mutual aid nonprofit’s founder. The program works to keep 10 established fridges in the Richmond area stocked with free food. Scott founded RVA Community Fridges in 2020 after wanting to redistribute surplus tomatoes she grew in her home garden. 

Mutual aid is the principle of serving one’s community to meet the immediate needs of community members, according to GlobalGiving, a nonprofit organization that connects other nonprofits with donors and companies.

A small food pantry and community fridge at 3200 Dill Avenue in the North Highland Park neighborhood of Richmond, VA, contains vegetables, seafood and non-perishables. The food pantry is part of a mutual aid effort by RVA Community Fridges. Photo by Grace Bost.

The goal is to add more fridges in food deserts, areas that are far from grocery stores and have limited access to affordable and fresh food. 

The newest fridge was established at Ms. Girlee’s Kitchen — a restaurant in the Fulton Hill neighborhood — after community members highly requested it. The area is a food desert lacking basic infrastructure, according to Scott. 

Providing food for the Fulton Hill community has been rewarding, Scott said. Over 60% of the neighborhood’s population is Black, and 10% are over age 65, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau. Scott wants to add more fridges in communities of color. Black individuals make up 29% of the population of Richmond and Petersburg, but account for 48% of people experiencing poverty, according to United Way, an organization that funds nonprofits in the Richmond area. Latino individuals make up 6% of the population but account for 15% of individuals experiencing poverty, according to the same data.

Households with children were more likely than any other demographic to use food pantries in 2020.

Black Space Matters

The Institute for Contemporary Art at VCU in 2020 started a collaboration with Duron Chavis, an urban farmer and community activist, to highlight issues of food insecurity. Chavis grew food in the vacant lot outside the museum that was later distributed. The project also highlighted the importance of Black community spaces to have conversations about food justice. 

People cannot discuss food insecurity without discussing the issue of land use, Chavis said, because those who do not have access to healthy food often don’t have access to land to grow that food.

“Our work is about reaching people’s dignity and their ability to be self-determining and to make decisions for themselves that increase their health and increase access to healthy food without hoping on some outside resources to come in and make everything better for them,” Chavis said.

Governments could create something like an office dedicated to urban agriculture, but Richmond hasn’t established such an office, Chavis said.

Mark Davis, founder of Real Roots Food Systems, also is working to expand access to locally-grown food. The organization’s goal is for people to know where their food comes from and experiment with ways to obtain food that doesn’t involve purchasing items.

“I think it’s a special thing to be in a cashless exchange in times like these, to create a resiliency in communities like this,” Davis said recently when interviewed for the “Black Space Matters” Season Two documentary series. 

Davis said that he grows food on land in Hanover County, owned by Richmond-based First Baptist Church. The church then donates the food to food pantries and other outlets. RealRoots wants to create less waste in landfills and meaningful collection of research around waste diversion.

Two Feed More food donation boxes are housed in the parking lot of the organization. Feed More serves food distribution organizations around the Richmond area, including Fonticello. Photo by Grace Bost.

Legislative action 

Virginia legislators are also enacting laws to help support access to local agriculture. Del. Sam Rasoul, D-Roanoke, introduced House Bill 2068 in the 2021 Virginia General Assembly session to connect local farmers to local consumers, he said.

The bill, which was passed unanimously by both chambers in 2021, established the Local Food and Farming Infrastructure Grant Program. The program created grants to support infrastructure and other projects to support local farming. The grants are available on a competitive basis and award up to $25,000 per grant, according to the bill.

Some examples of ways the grants have been used include flash freezing produce, canning farmed food, and transferring farmed food to wholesale markets, Rasoul said.

“So, it’s all about trying to get that local food from the farm to the market, and at the same time reducing our [carbon] footprint,” Rasoul said.

Rasoul introduced HB 323 this past session to double the program’s available grant money from $25,000 to $50,000. Both chambers in the General Assembly also passed this measure unanimously.

The grant program awarded eight grants in December 2021 to various food infrastructure projects. Two of the projects involve improving farmer’s markets, two involve meat processors and two involve upgrading local canning systems, according to the Virginia Department for Agriculture and Consumer Services.

A miniature food pantry, part of the Ram Pantry at Virginia Commonwealth University, is filled with non-perishable food and hygiene products. This one located at the University Student Commons is one of 13 Little Ram Pantries across campus. Photo by Grace Bost.

Campus connections

Food insecurity worsened because of COVID-19, according to data from Feeding America. However, data suggest food insecurity was a problem among college students before the pandemic.

Youngmi Kim, associate professor of social work at Virginia Commonwealth University, researched food insecurity among college students before the onset of COVID-19. She found that 35% of VCU students experienced food insecurity. 

This finding inspired environmental studies professor John Jones to dream up a miniature version of the main food pantry on campus, which began in 2014 and is located inside the University Student Commons at VCU.

Little Ram Pantries launched in October 2021 in various locations around campus. People can take however much of the nonperishable items they need and donate as much food as they can. Jones had the idea for the effort when he came across a small food pantry in the Church Hill neighborhood in Richmond, he said. The effort mirrors the “little free pantry” movement spawned from little free libraries seen in neighborhoods around the U.S.

One aspect preventing people from using the main food pantry on campus is the stigma associated with food pantries, according to Jones. He wanted to employ the Little Ram Pantries as a way to eliminate the stigma surrounding using resources, he said.

“Let’s try to make this so visible on campus that it fades into the background,” Jones said.

Jones received program funding from the Office of Community Engagement and VCU Service Learning, and has support from the school’s Institute for Inclusion, Inquiry, and Innovation. Each box has a sensor to track when the boxes are opened and closed for Jones’ research.

Jones found students interact with the Little Ram Pantries at over twice the rate they visit the main campus food pantry. The main food pantry on campus receives about 34 visits per week, Jones said, while the satellite version he launched receives about 75. This success led to him expanding the program by creating more locations.

“I think that the data that we have is very promising,” Jones said. “And I think that with some tweaking, I think the model could be very effective on other campuses.”

Professors from the University of Alabama and the University of West Georgia reached out to him about starting their own version of the program, Jones said. He wants to launch a website that details best practices for miniature food pantries, he said.

Despite the success of the Little Ram Pantries and other food pantry models, Jones said food pantries are not a solution to food insecurity.

“If our society wants to be serious about fixing the underlying issue as to why people are hungry, then we need to look at the issue of why people aren’t being paid enough,” Jones said.

Fonticello’s community compost bin is freshly topped off with radishes, corn and other produce. Any food not taken from the farm stand each week is composted to fertilize the community garden. Photo by Grace Bost.

Fonticello Food Forest founders Price and Sullivan helped round up the neighbor’s loose chickens and returned to finish the interview.

Efforts to combat food insecurity are notable, they said, but shouldn’t be necessary.

“In a truly just world and a truly reciprocal, mutual-aid world, there wouldn’t be this food waste to be redistributed and folks would be more connected to the food process,” Price said. “We understand that that’s not such an easy thing, to just suddenly flip a switch on, so you do what you do in the meantime.”

Written by Grace Bost and Katharine DeRosa, Capital News Service. Top Photo: Neighbors take greens from a box at the Fonticello farm stand. They are only some of the over 100 people who utilize the farm stand each week. Photo by Grace Bost.

Hungry Harvest are the Food Heroes We Need

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From the many food insecurity issues created by the pandemic to the ongoing threat of food scarcity due to climate change, access to fresh produce is one of the biggest challenges we’ll face in coming years. Thankfully, Hungry Harvest is here to help.

The COVID-19 pandemic hit the country (and the world) pretty hard. The economy has been hurt in a variety of ways, from jobs lost or indefinitely put on hold to some industries changing entirely in a desperate attempt to stay afloat in a world crisis that even now has no road map in sight. Through this trickle effect, housing was one of the largest targets directly affected, along with the greatest equalizer — food. 

On average the United States wastes between 30 and 40 percent of its food supply every year, with the annual value being approximately $161 billion. In 2020 over 54 million Americans were food insecure, with 18 million of them being children. This is a massive increase from the previously recorded 37 million (and 11 million children) in 2019 — thanks, of course, to the COVID-19 pandemic.  

Having to fight with your landlord about your rent during a worldwide health crisis that is leaving no one untouched is bad enough; trying in the midst of it to ignore the fact that you have no idea where your next meal is going to come from just adds salt to the wound. Luckily there are some companies out there ready to help. 

Hungry Harvest, which was founded in 2014 by Evan Lutz, is trying to help find a solution for that. Not only do they run a produce subscription box service helping deliver fruits and vegetables that may not have otherwise survived the grocery store, in the process they are actively trying to eliminate food insecurity and waste. 

On average, about 45 percent of food is wasted. However, since 2014 Hungry Harvest has since about saved about 27 million pounds of food from landfills, while ensuring that over 1.7 million pounds of produce go to local people in need. But if we know this is an issue, why are we so comfortable with wasting food knowing that we have community members in need? 

“I think on an institutional level, the fact there really is no incentive to not waste food is a good [reason],” said Bart Creasman, Hungry Harvest’s Senior Brand Manager in Raleigh, North Carolina.

A significant cause of food waste is purely cosmetic concerns — is the food attractive? Not only will some grocery stores refuse to stock fruits or vegetables that are not visually appealing, but some farmers will not even harvest produce that isn’t considered attractive. 

“The beginning of our company was founded on ugly produce,” said Creasman. “That is certainly a big contributor. A farmer won’t even harvest  items that they don’t think will sell. ”

Photo via Hungry Harvest/Facebook

It makes sense on a surface level. You’re walking through the berry section of your local big box grocery store and are provided with two options – fire engine red strawberries that are the perfect, almost cartoonishly proportionate shape, or strawberries that are fresh and taste the same, but are a little misshapen or discolored? Odds are you chose the first batch, and in turn the second batch at some point was pitched because it didn’t sell. 

It’s a purely instictual choice, one your big box grocer is fully aware of — and they do not care. 

“It’s like a little dance,” said Creasman. “They know what we want, and we know what we want. We certainly don’t want them to throw food out, [but] we kind of want to ignore that problem as consumers, and as grocery stores there is a very easy way to ignore that problem, by throwing it away. ” 

Beyond the pandemic, our old friend climate change refuses to go away, like the party guest that can’t take a hint despite the fact that the lights are out. As climate change and its effects continue to haunt us, is the possibility of ever running out of food enough to get us to expedite how we waste food on average? Maybe… or maybe not. 

“In a perfect world, Hungry Harvest would not need to exist, but we just take what would otherwise fall through the cracks,” said Creasman. “You hope that the threat of climate change, and even some of the very noticeable things we’re seeing this year, the past few years, will have that effect. Because food waste in landfills is way worse for the environment than general waste.”

A horrifying but nonetheless true fact is that a head of lettuce takes roughly about 25 years to decompose in a landfill. The reason food waste in a landfill is worse for the environment than most general waste is because, while food wasting away in your backyard will decompose, food waste in a landfill has other things piled on top of it, which help preserve it by causing it to take longer to break down. While it is under those layers, the food waste releases methane gas which is, to be blunt, way fucking worse than carbon dioxide. 

Yikes. 

Crop yields and the amount of product that they are actually able to harvest are another contributor to the conversation around food waste. A farmer can grow 50 pounds of potatoes, but if they are only able to harvest about 30 pounds of that product, that is a contribution. 

“[Crop yields] are related to food waste because of how specifications dictate what is worth harvesting,” said Kevin Kresloff, Director of Procurement and Purchasing for Hungry Harvest. “Many growers, if not all growers, only collect the merchandise they know they have an outlet for, versus what they know they don’t. That amount of product that doesn’t have a customer would be considered when factoring in yield. ”

On the growth side of things, farmers and their distributors were heavily affected by the pandemic, especially if they had a primary focus on the food service industry. With every restaurant on the block closed, where was the food supposed to go?

“Lots of crops that are primarily used in food service settings were in need of homes,” said Kresloff. “Otherwise, things seemed to stay relatively consistent, due to larger purchasing habits from customers who were going to the store for one big shop so they didn’t have to go back anytime soon. Other factors being an increase for home delivery services and the Farm to Families government initiative that helped support the movement of product.”

Photo via Hungry Harvest/Facebook

Food that doesn’t make it to the consumer is considered a food loss, as opposed to willful food waste. Other factors in the occurrence of crop loss are general market fluctuations, and the weather. Regardless, in the end, sometimes it comes down to how growers are able to distribute.

“Growers typically have relationships with several types of buyers,” said Lisa K. Johnson, Adjunct Assistant Professor at North Carolina State University. “If they don’t, they would have been dramatically affected. For example, if a grower’s only clients were food service, they may have tanked. All food service that we can think of was dramatically affected. However, if they have retail clients, they may not have been able to supply enough. It’s a matter of a grower either having the bandwidth to have their own sales department or a huge variety of connections to have been able to survive this kind of pandemic.”

Despite the heavy clouds surrounding the discussion of food loss and waste, it isn’t entirely hopeless. There are steps that we can take on the community level to try to prevent as much waste as we can. 

“Willingness to make use of what we have,” said Kresloff. “We need to educate ourselves on how to navigate small defects versus considering the entire product to be unusable. Use what you have. Be resourceful.”

Top Photo via Hungry Harvest/Facebook

Ram Pantry Makes Sure There’s Still Food on the Table

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A greater number of VCU students than you think struggle with food insecurity. Fortunately, Ram Pantry is there to help alleviate food insecurity within the VCU campus community.

College students already have a lot on their plate regarding stress. From finals, to worrying about finding employment after graduation, to just finding a parking spot, there is a lot going on for students without adding food insecurity to the equation. An average of 38 percent of students are food insecure countrywide, with more specific statistics varying by college and state. A global pandemic on top of it all is, to say the least, not helping. 

Luckily for students of Virginia Commonwealth University, there are options like Ram Pantry.  An institution within the university for years, Ram Pantry helps provide food to students at VCU who face the challenge of being food insecure. Students can qualify by going online to the pantry’s website and filling out a Google Doc application to pick up donated food. All student identities are kept private, and most of the information is used as a census to get a better idea of what students’ needs in the area are, both in a dietary sense and in terms of overall need. 

“[Ram Pantry] is open to all students,” said Lisa Mathews-Ailsworth, Advisor for Off-Campus Student Services at VCU. “We do ask that they be in need, but we do not have anything that disqualifies anybody.”

Mathews-Ailsworth oversees and ensures that the pantry functions, while also advising in the VCU dean of students’ office. She noted that while the Google Doc helps give Ram Pantry a better sense of the needs of the overall student population, it is also used as a way to figure out what financial needs the students have, and what steps they can take to help. Whether it is help with budgeting, the SNAP benefits program, or connecting with the various resources on campus, ultimately the end goal is for students to no longer need the pantry. 

“We can also help them connect with the various resources on campus, the biggest one of which we try to push is budgeting,” said Mathews-Ailsworth. “They can meet with you, talk with you, talk about your budget from work or financial aid, where is the money going, how can we help you to get more money, or save money. We work with [students] as a liaison, and try to figure out how we can help them to be successful personally and academically, and what kind of skills they need to reach that level of success.”

One of the biggest ways that Ram Pantry tries to help students facing varying levels of food insecurity is academically. Certainly one of the biggest stressors students face in these situations is money for food, but that leads into the long term effects that students will have due to food insecurity — not just on their health, but on their academic performance and resulting futures. Naturally, if you’re focused on where your next meal is coming from you are not going to think about too much else. This can make scholastic focus difficult, which turns into a long term set of cascading dominos. 

“If you don’t have a roof over your head, or you don’t have food in your stomach, it’s very difficult to focus on your academics or social interactions with other students,” said Mathews-Ailsworth. 

Lisa Mathews-Ailsworth. Photo via VCU

Ram Pantry is entirely volunteer-led. Pre-COVID, it was staffed by four work study students, and during COVID, it is entirely virtual and contactless. Two students workers work there each day, with eighteen student workers total on staff. So far this year the pantry has seen upwards of 569 visits; the numbers pre-pandemic were even higher. 

When the pandemic hit, many students working in the service industry lost their jobs and understandably opted to stay home, if possible, in order to save money. Ram Pantry also took a hit amidst the uncertainty that everyone faced last March, and opted to shut down until further notice because, like the rest of the world, they were not sure what was going to happen next. 

“We cleared out shelves 100 percent,” said Mathews-Ailsworth. “We took everything we had and divided it into boxes, and just gave it out to students and told them to take it. No one knows what the future holds, who knows what is going to happen financially. Period.”

The pantry reopened that September and started completely from scratch. They relied almost entirely upon the kindness of strangers, especially their donors.

“They came through with flying colors,” said Mathews-Ailsworth. “Hungry Harvest started giving us produce, Duncan United Methodist Church in Ashland gave us bread every week. The Pace Center was crucial in getting us stocked back up. Kroger came through like no other and gave us $6000.”

Times of struggle often prove that your neighbors are there for you to lean on when you need them, even when they are big names, such as grocery giant Kroger. However there is still lots of ground left to cover with other powerhouses, even the ones in your own backyard. As a VCU alumni myself with memories of Rodney the Ram vivid in my head, this writer had a big elephant in the room to tackle. 

Has having an organization on campus like Ram Pantry made VCU more cognizant of their own food waste? 

“Unfortunately, I don’t think it does,” said Mathews-Ailsworth. “The dining halls are not usually able to donate because of federal laws. Because of the way that insurance policies are, if they donate to an organization, they can be held accountable if someone is sick.”

Fortunately, one thing that can not be denied is that Virginia is for lovers, and cities like Richmond pride themselves on their love of community. Whether it is protecting small businesses from megalo-mart giants, or ensuring our college students are receiving the help they need, Richmond gets it done when times get tight. 

If you want to get involved with Ram Pantry, the best thing you can do is donate. Information about the best way to donate food, money, organize a food drive for Ram Pantry, buy them things from their Amazon wish list, and more can all be found at the Ram Pantry’s website. But outside of doations, the biggest way you can help is a lot easier than you might think. 

“We rely a lot on word of mouth,” said Mathews-Ailsworth, “Even just talking to people about the Ram Pantry is super helpful to us, because you never know who you are talking to, and who might know somebody that is food insecure, or might be struggling and didn’t know we are a resource.”

Top Photo via VCU Ram Pantry

Hungry Harest proudly partners with VCU Ram Pantry

Central Virginia Food Bank Provides Hunger Relief During Pandemic

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Feed More has always focused on providing Central Virginians in need with food. During the COVID-19 pandemic, their services have been more in need than ever, and this nonprofit is rising to the occasion.

When COVID-19 was declared a national emergency at the beginning of March, Feed More, a hunger-relief organization serving Central Virginians, was serving roughly 161,000 food-insecure individuals. 

Fast forward to early June, and Feed More was assisting more than 241,000 food-insecure individuals, according to Doug Pick, CEO and president of Feed More. 

“It [the pandemic] increased the number of folks that weren’t sure where their next meal was coming from by about 50 percent,” Pick said.

That 50 percent increase, he said, was largely from those who were newly unemployed as a result of the pandemic. The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated food insecurity throughout Virginia and across the country. With 2020 coming to a close, food insecurity is lingering in many Virginia households as hunger-relief organizations and local officials scramble to curb one of the pandemics’ consequences.

Food insecurity is defined by the U.S. Department of Agriculture as limited or uncertain availability or accessibility to nutritionally adequate food. Nearly 10 percent of all Virginians — or almost 843,000 people — are struggling with hunger, according to Feeding America, a nationwide hunger-relief organization.

An additional 447,000 Virginians will experience food insecurity because of the coronavirus pandemic, Feeding America estimates. Across the country, millions of Americans have lined up in their cars or by foot for miles at food banks awaiting their next meal.

Photo courtesy Feed More.

Nationwide, food banks also have to grapple with the dilemma of increased demand while maintaining their agencies network. In 2019, Feed More distributed about 32 million pounds of food, Pick said. This year, he estimates the organization will distribute between 40 to 44 million pounds of food. The nonprofit distributes food with the help of agencies, including churches, emergency shelters, rehab centers, soup kitchens, and other organizations. 

“We worried about that network collapsing because most of those agencies are run by volunteers, and a lot of them are seniors,” Pick said. At one point this year, Feed More lost 13 percent of its 270 agencies.

Feed More did not witness the phenomenon of long lines other regions experienced and was able to meet the community’s food crisis, Pick said. 

“We put out some guiding principles early on that said: stick with our infrastructure, never abandon the infrastructure you built unless you have to,” Pick said. “So, we didn’t panic.”

Those guiding principles upheld Feed More’s mission while adhering to COVID-19 safety precautions. 

Feed More’s Meals on Wheels program usually serves meals daily, but it is now delivering these meals frozen, once a week. The organization’s community kitchen, which preps approximately 20,000 meals a week, now is divided into two kitchen spaces – a prepping kitchen and a cooking kitchen – in two separate buildings, according to Pick.

Recent research found that the number of families who experienced food insecurity increased by 20 percent in the United States as a result of the pandemic. The study was co-authored by Elizabeth Adams, a postdoctoral fellow at Virginia Commonwealth University’s Massey Cancer Center. 

“We all know (the pandemic) had so many profound effects across so many aspects of people’s lives and has gone on for a long time,” Adams said.

The study methodology surveyed households across the country in late April and May with different food security levels – high food security, low food security and very low food security – about food consumption during the pandemic.

The survey saw a 73 percent increase in home cooking across all food security levels. The amount of in-home food availability increased 56 percent for food-secure families but decreased 53 percent for low food-secure families.

“For very low food-security families, we saw an increase in pressure to eat,” Adams said, “which means that parents are pressuring their children to eat more.”

Food is prepared for distribution at FeedMore, one of U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) partner agencies, located in Richmond, Virginia. USDA Photo by Preston Keres.

Adams said she hopes the government takes notice of the data on how widespread food insecurity is across the country, which she said disproportionately affects low-income Black and Hispanic families. 

While bringing awareness to the importance of government assistance programs and other food assistance initiatives, Adams called for these programs to “really up the benefit that they are providing at this time, because we see that a lot more people likely need them.”

Programs such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, saw an increase in enrollment during the initial months of the pandemic’s spread in the United States, reported the New York Times. According to data collected by the New York Times, SNAP grew 17 percent from February to May, three times faster than any prior three-month period.

In March, 687,984 Virginians were enrolled on food stamps. That number jumped to 746,608 the following month, an 8.5 percent increase, according to estimates from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Since March, eligible Virginians have been granted SNAP emergency benefits during the pandemic, according to The Virginia Department of Social Services. The agency recently expanded these benefits through December, with more than 245,000 households eligible for emergency benefits.

The state recently launched the Virginia Roadmap to End Hunger initiative that seeks to end hunger by developing policies, programs and partnerships.

Feed More and its partners had a stable food supply and community support because of government assistance, Pick said. Such assistance includes the USDA Farmers to Families Food Box Program. Food banks, such as Feed More, and other nonprofits were able to give out family-sized boxes of produce and meat products that the department purchased from farmers and distributors affected by the closure of restaurants and other food-service businesses.

Governor Ralph Northam also announced in November $7 million in Coronavirus Aid Relief and Economic Security Act funding. The funding will be allocated to the Federation of Virginia Food Banks, which Feed More is a member.

“The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the already serious problem of food insecurity in Virginia and across the country,” Northam stated in a press release. “This funding will help Virginia food banks and other food assistance programs meet the increased demand for their services and ensure every Virginian has continued access to nutritious food during these challenging times.”

Feed More will use its allocated $1 million to provide refrigeration, freezer, racking, and vehicles to its partner agencies.

However, Pick said he is concerned for the following year as the pandemic continues. He said there needs to be long-term government policies to address food insecurities beyond food banks’ control. 

“The food banks have always been here for emergency purposes. When people get to a tight bind,” he said. 

For now, Pick said Feed More will continue its best to provide food assistance to Central Virginians.

“The need is out there,” Pick said. “The jobs are not coming back overnight, and this (food insecurity) is just going to continue on.” 

Written by David Tran, Capital News Service. Top Photo: Feed More Meals on Wheels volunteers. Photo courtesy Feed More.

‘Black Space Matters’ Exhibit Transforms Asphalt Lot into Garden

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The “Commonwealth” exhibit at VCU’s Institute for Contemporary Art features work from 10 artists, including an outdoor garden installation by local activist Duron Chavis — which looks pretty amazing from an overhead view.

A local activist transformed a vacant lot outside the Institute for Contemporary Art in Richmond to highlight issues of food security and the importance of Black and brown community spaces.

The “Commonwealth” exhibit at Virginia Commonwealth University’s ICA features work from 10 artists including an outdoor installation created by activist and community farmer Duron Chavis, who builds gardens throughout Richmond. The full exhibit seeks to examine how common resources influence the wealth and well-being of communities.

Chavis proposed the resiliency garden exhibit in 2019, during a public forum at the ICA. The resiliency garden — food grown to weather the tough times and to have food independence — is installed in an asphalt lot at Grace and Belvidere streets next to the ICA, and features 30 raised beds of fruits, vegetables, and flowers.

Concept drawing for Duron Chavis’ Resiliency Garden, 2020 design by Quilian Riano of DSGN AGNC.

An extension of the garden exhibit is the “Black Space Matters” mural by Southside artist Silly Genius. A wall in the lot is painted, with fruit making the word Black; beneath the garden in big, yellow letters is the phrase “Space Matters.” The garden beds have historic quotes from civil rights leaders Kwame Ture and Malcolm X, among other activists. 

“Black Space Matters means that Black people need space,” Chavis said. “We need space that is explicitly designed, planned, and implemented by Black and brown people.”

Chavis, along with a crew of volunteers, started building the garden on Aug. 10, while the ICA temporarily closed to install other exhibits.

“We invited him to think with us about how to activate a vacant lot next to the ICA,” said Stephanie Smith, ICA chief curator. “You could think about what it means to take a space and institutional resources, then give them over to an activist.”

Chavis seeks to address lack of food access through his activism. Food insecurity, defined by the United States Department of Agriculture as “a household-level economic and social condition of limited or uncertain access to adequate food,” is an issue in Richmond’s low-income neighborhoods. The city had over 35,000 food-insecure people in 2018, according to Feeding America, a network of more than 200 food banks.

“In a conversation about food justice, Black people are predominately impacted by lack of food access,” Chavis said. “We need space to address that issue.”

Low income communities need access to resources and necessary skills to solve food wealth issues on their own, he said. 

“We do not need anybody to come into our community to drop off food,” Chavis said. 

He’s been doing work like this since 2012 and doesn’t have a hard count of how many garden beds have been built. 

“Dozens, oh god, it’s all across the city,” he said. 

Chavis amplified his efforts this year because of the pandemic. He fundraised and received a grant, according to a VPM report, to build over 200 resiliency gardens with the help of volunteers. 

The “Commonwealth” exhibit features work from 10 artists including an outdoor installation created by community farmer, Duron Chavis, who builds gardens throughout Richmond. The resiliency garden is installed in an asphalt lot next to the Institute for Contemporary Art and features 30 raised beds of fruits, vegetables and flowers. Photo by VCU CNS.

Quilian Riano, an architect at New York studio DSGN AGNC, designed the concept drawing for the ICA garden, which was envisioned as a public space for conversation and lecture. The completed garden is nearly identical to the original design, except with an added texture and dimension, Riano said.

 The “Commonwealth” exhibit will be open until Jan. 17, 2021. After the exhibit ends, the gardens’ supplies and plants will be redistributed to other resiliency garden project locations throughout Richmond. Chavis collaborates with other groups and people to help people grow their own food during the pandemic.

Tickets to the indoor exhibitions can be reserved on the ICA website. Exhibits include a video performance by indigenous artist Tanya Lukin Linklater, Carolina Caycedo’s “Distressed Debt” and a sculpture by Lukin Linklater and Tiffany Shaw-Collinge.

Written by India Espy-Jones, Capital News Service. Top Photo by VCU CNS.