Boulder Food Rescue
Redistributing Produce and Power
As we gear up for Colorado Gives Day next Tuesday, December 10, we are asking for your support to increase our impact! For every $1, we are able to redistribute $8 worth of fresh produce. We are committed to increasing food access, while diverting perfectly good and nourishing food from the landfill.
You can make a difference in your community by scheduling a donation for Colorado Gives Day or securely on our website.
Food Rescue Alliance member, Colorado Springs Food Rescue, was featured in this article by Food Tank. The Food Rescue Alliance is growing and currently at 23 member organizations.
A little about Food Rescue Alliance in the article:
The Food Rescue Alliance sees residents as leaders in the development process rather than targets of an intervention. “Food Rescue models enable community-based solutions to take over, decentralizing food access and increasing participation on a city-wide level,” Dansky explains, “Increasing participation at programs increases food access because individuals are more likely to be involved and receive produce if they can give back, and are more likely to set up systems that work for their community if they have an active hand and voice in doing that.” The emphasis on community development is critical as other studies have shown that neglecting community members will result in persistent issues with food access.
A couple of food rescue couriers, Kenny and Ezra, take us on a food rescue shift from Sprouts in the Village Shopping Center to a No Cost Grocery Program at the Canyon Point community.
This segment was recently featured on Channel 8 News. The clip interviews a member of our rapid response team, Josh McNulty, while on a food rescue shift. It features the behind the scenes sorting process at the grocery store and biking the produce around town, as well as a brief interview with our Executive Director, Hayden Dansky.
Boulder Food Rescue just released a Participation Framework!
After several years of conducting participatory research on participation in food systems, we wrote this framework to help nonprofits look at their own internal systems and change structures to allow for the people they work with to have a voice at many levels of the organization.
It goes beyond the basics (which are still often lacking – does your meeting have childcare? food? transportation? what language is it in? what time and day is it?) to really seeing how internal structures (and often a time capacity) leave out integral voices needed to make an organization thrive. We believe food access is contingent on breaking down traditional systems of charity work and lines between who is serving and who is being served.
Although focused on food access, this guide is written to support all nonprofits and other human service organizations to analyze their own systems and to better understand how they can become more participatory. We believe that as we all start including the voices of people most affected by our work in the work, access to services will increase, and ultimately, people will feel more affirmed and respected, and will be better supported and resourced towards enacting community change.
It is in English and Spanish and available to download here. Feel free to share with your networks!
We will also be creating a toolkit, hosting a series of workshops, and publishing a report on food access in the upcoming months, so stay tuned!