Our food access work has included sharing meals in public spaces like downtown parks and opening our community space up for hospitality. We have used meals to celebrate culture teaching youth how to make tamales and making 1000 tamales to be shared with people in need who were alone at the holidays and were able to share a meal, dance to a mariachi band, and enjoy company. We have had racial healing circles with shared soul food and stories about Asheville’s African American community prior to Urban Renewal. We have had Hispanic Heritage Month with games, art, and pupusas! When we saw elders at the Senior Opportunity Center (most of whom lived in poverty and had to make choices between housing, heat, medicine, and food) struggle with food security and longing for fresh healthy food, we pioneered a new model replacing the can goods, cardboard boxes, lines and paperwork of food pantries with free farmers markets. Fresh healthy produce was on table cloth covered tables in baskets, tasting demonstrations, live music, and community made it a delightful and dignified way to access food.
At the time, food pantries did not deal with perishable food as it went bad so quickly when they stored it for the one day they were open. At the same token, many people living in poverty had trouble accessing food because of transportation issues. What if we could harness fresh healthy food from famers and grocery stores and get them directly to people that need it where they already gathered. Thus the produce would be in people’s homes that very night. This birthed a movement with many other non-profits coming to study this new model and replicating it throughout WNC. Today, we are sharing more than 15,000 pounds of fresh healthy food every week. We are sharing plants and seeds to support our community members in growing food in their neighborhoods, backyards, and porch stoops. We are building community gardens. We are teaching children and youth what it means to work together to grow and share food.
